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Communications Security Your Rights Online

Robocalling Scourge May Not Be Unstoppable After All (arstechnica.com) 236

Posted by msmash from the good-news dept.
Dan Goodin, writing for Ars Technica: New data shows that the majority of robot-enabled scam phone calls came from fewer than 40 call centers, a finding that offers hope the growing menace of robocalls can be stopped. The calls use computers and the Internet to dial thousands of phone numbers every minute and promote fraudulent schemes that promise to lower credit card interest rates, offer loans, and sell home security products, to name just a few of the scams. Over the past decade, robocall complaints have mushroomed, with the Federal Trade Commission often receiving hundreds of thousands of complaints each month. In 2013, the consumer watchdog agency awarded $50,000 to three groups who devised blocking systems that had the potential to help end the scourge. Three years later, however, the robocall problem seems as intractable as ever. On Thursday at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas, a researcher said that slightly more than half of more than 1 million robocalls tracked were sent by just 38 telephony infrastructures. The relatively small number of actors offers hope that the phenomenon can be rooted out, by either automatically blocking the call centers or finding ways for law enforcement groups to identify and prosecute the operators. "We know that the majority of robocalls only come from 38 different infrastructures," Aude Marzuoli, research scientist at a company called Pindrop Labs, told Ars. "It's not as if there are thousands of people out there doing this. If you can catch this small number of bad actors we can" stop the problem."
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Robocalling Scourge May Not Be Unstoppable After All More

Robocalling Scourge May Not Be Unstoppable After All

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  • I've had to cancel a phone number over the sheer number of robocalls it got, rendering it useless. Even on my main personal cell phone I'll go through periods of several calls a week. I liked it better when there were real people on the other end you could fuck with rather than just robots.

    • I've set up my cell phone so that any calls I get from people who aren't in my address book just get shunted straight to voice mail. The phone doesn't even ring. Problem solved!

    • Re:Would love to see something done (Score:5, Interesting)

      by lawaetf1 ( 613291 ) on Friday August 05, 2016 @09:23AM (#52650605)

      Several calls a week? I'm envious. I get a minimum of several a day.
       
      You know, murder is a crime because you rob someone of the remaining time they might have had on this planet. Robo callers steal the equivalent of lifetimes every single day and our useless FTC seems utterly incapable of doing a damned thing about it.

      • Re:Would love to see something done (Score:4, Informative)

        by Scoth ( 879800 ) on Friday August 05, 2016 @09:38AM (#52650703)

        It comes and goes in cycles. For awhile I was getting several a day from the same company shilling security systems. I finally got them to stop when I worked my way through their system getting farther and farther along each call until I managed to get a tech dispatched to an abandoned house not far from me. They stopped calling at that point.

        Depending on what I was doing at the time, I also enjoyed just letting them ramble on for awhile about their spiel, then give them an address in Canada or Australia or something. Really pissed them off.

        Nowadays they're almost all initially handled by an automated speech thing (albeit some are scary good) so it's harder to have fun with them.

      • > Several calls a week? I'm envious. I get a minimum of several a day.

        Here is my solution to deal with those shenanigans:

        * Every spam call you get, counterintuitively, ADD it to your Contacts under "Spam" BUT append a number.

        i.e.

        I get a call from 555-1234, it gets added to contact "Spam1"
        I get a call from 555-9999, it gets added to contact "Spam2"
        I get a call from 555-1234 ... oh look, Spam1 is phoning. *Ignore*
        I get a call from 555-6666, it gets added to contact "Spam3"
        I get a call from 555-1234 ... oh

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by rwyoder ( 759998 )

          > Several calls a week? I'm envious. I get a minimum of several a day.

          Here is my solution to deal with those shenanigans:

          * Every spam call you get, counterintuitively, ADD it to your Contacts under "Spam" BUT append a number.

          You didn't mention what phone you have.
          I do the same thing on my iPhone, but I have noticed the block seems to take effect with the numbers in the contact at the time the block is applied. i.e. when I add a phone number to the "Spam" contact, I need to unblock "Spam" momentarily, then reapply the block, to ensure the new number is blocked.

      • Re:Would love to see something done (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Albanach ( 527650 ) on Friday August 05, 2016 @10:44AM (#52651141) Homepage

        I still believe that regulators should require that, if a caller ID is to be presented, it should be traceable to an individual in the originating country (with the carrier responsible if it's not). A carrier should be able to warrant this to its interconnects - if it can't, that carrier's calls will all be presented with no caller ID.

        Customers can then reject calls without caller ID or from other countries if necessary.,Where caller ID is presented it is then traceable to a person, enabling existing state rules about such calls to be enforced.

        There is no good reason that I should be able to buy a VOIP account for a couple of dollars a month and spoof any caller ID.

    • Re:Would love to see something done (Score:4, Informative)

      by Jason Levine ( 196982 ) on Friday August 05, 2016 @09:34AM (#52650675) Homepage

      Our main "Home Phone Number" is a Google Voice line. One of the nice features they have is "spam filtering" for phone calls. If a person calls us and it's a robocall/scammer, we can block the number. Then, when they call again, they get a "this number has been disconnected" message. If enough people do this, calls from that number automatically are blocked. Often, Google Voice will alert us that we missed a call when our phones didn't ring. When we look into the number, it's invariably a scammer trying to get through.

      • You can do this too with https://www.nomorobo.com/ [nomorobo.com]

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by wbr1 ( 2538558 )
        This does not work for me. My main number is ex-google voice, now Project Fi. I get several a week. Almost every one is from the same are code and exchange as me, just a different last 4. A couple of times it was even my own number. This tells me that they are spoofing the caller ID info, and since it is sufficiently random, I cannot block it from the carrier

        • This is a key part of the problem, the ability to spoof the caller ID. There are only a very few legitimate reasons for doing this (eg call back from Samaritans, sexual disease clinic, ...) most others should be banned. I will accept caller ID of a home worker being set to his company head office - but it will have to be registered as who he works for. Maybe also a legit call center that operates of behalf of customers - but again needing registration.

          Yes: many of these spam calls originate from overseas; t

    • I've had to cancel a phone number over the sheer number of robocalls it got, rendering it useless.

      I don't get a lot of calls but I do get some and my basic policy is that if the number isn't in my address book or I'm not expecting a call from a particular party it goes straight to voicemail because I won't pick up. I have a voicemail service that lets me block callers (they get a number not in service message), require them to enter a phone number if they block the caller id, and the service also helps flag robocalls, spammers, etc. It also transcribes the voicemails so I don't actually have to listen

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Scoth ( 879800 )

        That particular number was for a line that often received vendor calls, so simply blocking/dodging calls wasn't an option. New number we got was fine though.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by XXongo ( 3986865 )
      This is a solvable problem. They are monetizing these calls. Money is traceable. Follow the money and put them in jail.
    • Try this...it works for me: https://www.nomorobo.com/ [nomorobo.com]

      I don't work for them, so I don't know how trustworthy they are.

    • I very much enjoy messing with the scamers I got a call from the supposed IRS and I asked the guy if he could do the Microsoft tech support call instead because I found it really funny. After describing some of my favorite calls he said his boss was looking at him funny because he should have hung by now since I already knew. I haven't received any for a while.

    • Can't Big Blue, Amazon Alexa, Siri, or others provide a service that can be configured to answer your phone, detect a robo call, and keep the caller engaged in conversation as long as possible? We need a Liza upgrade.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by careysb ( 566113 )

        The article mentions that some group managed to create a honey pot for robocalls. Seems like an excellent source for training material for some voice recognition and artificial intelligence.

  • ...but where is the number or signal for Anonymous? I think I have a small job for them. See article. :)

  • We should call everyone (Score:4, Funny)

    by jfdavis668 ( 1414919 ) on Friday August 05, 2016 @09:16AM (#52650555)
    and let them know.

  • Low cost (Score:4, Insightful)

    by wbr1 ( 2538558 ) on Friday August 05, 2016 @09:16AM (#52650559)
    The cost of setting up a line and the equipment is extremely low now. I think that more will mushroom up when others are culled. Hail hydra.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Z00L00K ( 682162 )

      Depends on how they are culled. If they are done for in a spectacular and permanent way then others would think twice before starting such practice.

      • Depends on how they are culled. If they are done for in a spectacular and permanent way then others would think twice before starting such practice.

        There are only 40 call centers, gasoline is fairly inexpensive and there seems to be an excess of styrofoam around that no one can't get rid of

    • Mod parent up. It's naive to think you can extinguish the problem that easily. The money in robocalling obviously offsets the pesky legal issues...

  • For years they have basically thrown their hands in the air and declared the robo-calling problem unsolvable. They even pathetically tried to crowd-source a solution. And here we learn that there are a small number of perpetrators behind the majority of the calls. No doubt the FTC will do nothing with this information.

    I get as many as six robo calls a day. When I used to answer the calls just to waste their time the majority of the operators spoke American english so were clearly operating in th

  • We have the technology. Predator drones, heavily armed.

    Take out the call centers and more importantly, take out the people who are behind these operations.

    I have stated this before... this would be a far more useful application of the technology than how it is currently used.

  • Look, this is simple. We just need government workers to show up and actually work. Yeah, crazy talk, I know.

    Rachel from Cardholder Services advertises on Craigslist in Orlando. How difficult is it to just use their services (I know they're calling people at the FTC) and track them down? Use existing laws to put them out of business. There are plenty of options for those willing to do the minimal amount of work.

    • Use existing laws to put them out of business

      Can't we break out the pitchforks and torches for this? Literally?
      Come on, don't let Trump use his deep pockets to corner the angry mob market!

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Tailhook ( 98486 )

      Look, this is simple. We just need government workers to show up and actually work. Yeah, crazy talk, I know.

      They're underfunded. Just ask them. By the time our Federal LE's have analyzed all the consent decree paper work from racist police departments and processed all the refugee cases and sued enough states for voter ID laws and attended enough white privilege awareness seminars there is precious little time or budget left to pursue these criminals. Congress can outlaw whatever it wants but if the Republicans won't supply the billions upon billions needed to employ enough departments full of lawyers to pursu

    • Look, this is simple. We just need government workers to show up and actually work. Yeah, crazy talk, I know.

      Rachel from Cardholder Services advertises on Craigslist in Orlando. How difficult is it to just use their services (I know they're calling people at the FTC) and track them down? Use existing laws to put them out of business. There are plenty of options for those willing to do the minimal amount of work.

      To be slightly more precise, we need legislators to get their heads out of each others butts and do their job. The current bunch are almost entirely occupied with infighting. Fire them all, just to be sure.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Zak3056 ( 69287 )

        Look, this is simple. We just need government workers to show up and actually work. Yeah, crazy talk, I know.

        Rachel from Cardholder Services advertises on Craigslist in Orlando. How difficult is it to just use their services (I know they're calling people at the FTC) and track them down? Use existing laws to put them out of business. There are plenty of options for those willing to do the minimal amount of work.

        To be slightly more precise, we need legislators to get their heads out of each others butts and do their job. The current bunch are almost entirely occupied with infighting. Fire them all, just to be sure.

        The post you're replying to says "there are plenty of laws already on the books that cover these situations, we should just use them." Your response is "congress should get off its butts and pass more laws."

        Obligatory xkcd [xkcd.com].

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gtall ( 79522 )

      Most government workers are conscientious about reporting to work and doing their job. And the ones facing the public have the worst jobs because the pubic, probably contrary to your beliefs, is crazy. Ever listen to CSPAN's call in show? The things members of the public believe are unbelievable, yet they persist.

      I though it was just those "other people" at first. Then I found out my sister wrote a letter to President Obama claiming she didn't receive her fair share when Ma died and the estate was settled t

  • I suppose making a law against it, and arresting them isn't a solution?
  • Sure, they use caller ID spoofing so that we, the recipients, can't block the number, but you know who knows exactly who the spammers are? The phone company, for two reasons: first, they're routing the calls from end to end, so they know the real source rather than the spoofed one. Second, and more importantly, they're billing them for the calls. They're not sending out bills for thousands of calls to the spoofed IDs, but the real ones. And while individually, those calls are cheap, the tens of thousands a day add up and the phone company makes a lot of money from the spammers, all while telling the FCC and consumers that their hands are tied.

    Freeze their assets until they release the billing information to the state AGs. That'll untie their hands really quick.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      No. They're not "routing the calls from end to end".

      They get a call from a 3rd party, the call has ID in it, but they only deal with that 3rd party they don't know or care who actually has the phone initiating the call. The rules for how that works are set by the International Telecommunication Union or ITU which governs how telephone networks connect between countries.

      Like the Universal Postal Union, and like the IANA, this can only work if everybody agrees. But if you don't agree, you have to be cut off c

    • Then they'll have to make up for those losses in other ways. They'll start adding frivolous fees to legitimate users bills. They'll start charging for text messaging!

      oh, wait...

  • No, the government should not interfere in the telemarketing industry.
    Free market theory tells us that bad actors will go out of business on their own because people will refuse to purchase the services they are selling.
    So there is no need for the government to interfere. The problem will solve itself.

  • Of course it isn't unstoppable. (Score:3)

    by 110010001000 ( 697113 ) on Friday August 05, 2016 @09:37AM (#52650695) Homepage Journal
    Anything can be stopped with enough effort. This includes online piracy, pornography, etc as well. With enough will, there are technological solutions. People think that the Internet and voip will stay the way it is now. It won't: eventually there will be full control over what you can transmit and receive over the Internet. People will scoff and say "this will never happen", but they are shortsighted. It will. There is enough money at stake.

    The fact that the Internet was the "Wild West" is just because the Internet was ignored for a long time by the powers-that-be. My feeling is eventually you won't be able to connect to the Internet without an "approved" network connection device/router and that device will be monitored and encrypted traffic will be either disallowed or the router will do MITM to allow the monitoring to take place. This is all technologically possible today. Secure boot, locked down devices are just the start.
    "Surely you can't be serious!", Slashdotters will say! Well I say "Stop calling me Shirley!"

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Gr8Apes ( 679165 )

      My feeling is eventually you won't be able to connect to the Internet without an "approved" network connection device/router and that device will be monitored and encrypted traffic will be either disallowed or the router will do MITM to allow the monitoring to take place. This is all technologically possible today. Secure boot, locked down devices are just the start.

      with end to end keyed encryption available, this will be hard to enforce unless encryption AND VPNs are disallowed. I don't think a lot of companies would be too keen on allowing the gov full access to all their internet traffic any more than they'd be happy to send copies of all their documents, with the exception of RIM, of course.

  • Cut'em off at the root. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by TheHawke ( 237817 ) <rchapin@NOSPam.stx.rr.com> on Friday August 05, 2016 @09:39AM (#52650711)

    The FCC and FTC need to be going after the telecoms selling the phone numbers and trunks to them instead. I know CenturyLink is infamous for that, leasing numbers and trunks to them up in Portland with little or no regard for national security or respect for the law. Only then being an accessory to the crime by shielding their identity information from the law.

    Yeah, the ILEC's and CLEC's need to be held accountable for that.

  • Hold the phone companies responsible. (Score:3)

    by wcrowe ( 94389 ) on Friday August 05, 2016 @09:42AM (#52650733)

    Of course it is stoppable. I mean, how are these companies getting their phone numbers from which they operate? Why are companies like AT&T selling blocks of phone numbers to people for next to nothing? The phone companies are responsible for this mess and nobody is taking them to task for it.

    • Most are spoofed or fake. You can send what ever Caller ID you want to and pretend its you. All phone companies allow this. I have set up many phone systems that will forward a call through the to an outside line and show the caller ID of the incoming call So if i call a persons desk phone and it forwards my call to their cell phone they see my cell number. All phone systems allow this and its easy to program them with fake outgoing caller ID's. Centurylink does do some filtering but there is a work around

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by sjames ( 1099 )

        Caller ID is nearly meaningless, but do you think the BILLING department relies on Caller ID? The metadata used for billing is quite reliable and spoofing is not allowed.

        We just need to play the exciting game of "Here's your fine". I'll bet if the local telco is offered a choice of pay the million dollar fine themselves or tell who handed the call off to them, they'll find that metadata. Lather, rinse, and repeat until you end up at a call center.

    • They aren't even selling phone numbers. You can purchase VoIP services for dirt cheap without a number if all you plan on doing is making outgoing calls. You only need a phone number if you want people to actually call you.

  • The common carriers (Score:5, Insightful)

    by siamesevodka ( 1852446 ) on Friday August 05, 2016 @09:42AM (#52650735)
    The NSA can tap every phone in the country, but they can't find Rachel from cardholder services. The sad truth is these creatures prey on the elderly, and people who may not have the sophistication to deal with these solicitors. So it is far from harmless or victimless, and sometimes with little recourse. Now that may sound like small potatoes. But thousands of calls are placed, and they only have to be right a small percentage of this to make money and to ruin lives. The common carriers like them because of the revenue stream. I'm sure they have the capability to stop them, but that is not in there best interest to do so as they are making money as well. The FTC provides lip service they are out to get them, but I'm sure the lobbying efforts keep them from doing anything. So you can bet the carriers and the telemarketing industry are lobbying hard to keep the status quo. I think to myself that I'm to smart to fall for these scams, but now that I'm older I keep thinking someday I might not have as good of faculties and fall for something that could wipe me out financially. It does happen.

    • The NSA can tap every phone in the country, but they can't find Rachel from cardholder services.

      ^^^^ This, times a million billion.

      If I ever find that bitch, I'll rip her limb from limb. Slowly. While she's impaled on an iron spike.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by swb ( 14022 )

      You're right, the carriers have a huge moral hazard in that they collect interconnect fees from VoIP providers. They can identify any call origin, but the question is do they want to give up that provider's payments.

      It always galls me that law enforcement wants unmitigated hacking power for communications systems and devices, but never use it to go after fraudulent businesses.

    • The NSA can tap every phone in the country, but they can't find Rachel from cardholder services.

      Not true. [ftc.gov] The FTC has shut down over a dozen companies over this. The problem is that there are many scammers running copycat scams and it's nearly impossible to catch them all.

  • There must be bulletproof source ID for calls (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    The robocall problem will never be addressed until there is bulletproof traceback for all calls. Anyone with the know-how can falsify caller-id and even ANI. Even phone carriers can't identify the actual source of many robocalls coming into their network; all they know is the upstream hop. The national phone system trust system is broken and it is going to have to be updated so the carriers can ID the source of any call they carry. Then, and only then, you can blackhole them.

    It's amazing the terrorists

  • Is our phone network so insecure... (Score:3)

    by QuietLagoon ( 813062 ) on Friday August 05, 2016 @10:11AM (#52650917)
    ... that the robo-callers appear to have unfettered access to it? How are they getting in to the phone network? Who is giving them access? At a minimum, access to the phone network needs to be secured so that source numbers cannot be spoofed.

    .
    Currently, we cannot find the robo-callers because we allow them to hide. Why is that so? Why do we make it easy for them to hide?

  • If we've narrowed it down to 40 call centers it'd be child's play to put a stop to this. When you cut all that "Bureaucratic Waste" you've got no money for enforcement. The Drug War gets a pass because private prisons lobby for dollars since locking up non-violent offenders is the only way they're profitable.

  • I see comments RE the FTC. There is a good chance the call centers are not in the US, and therefor NOT subject to US law. Ah the fun of the borderless internet

    Of course, the US really could solve it, and 100 years ago, countries that had citizens of other countries violating their wars did regularly

    38 JDAMs would solve the problem, and send a warning at the same time
    http://fas.org/man/dod-101/sys... [fas.org]

  • Instead of standing straight like the oak and breaking. Don't try to block these calls, deflect them past yourself. i.e. Instead of blocking calls from known-robocall caller ID numbers, everyone just needs to set up a filter which automatically forwards them to the number for your Congressman or Senator.
  • The telcos in this issue remind me of Bofors, whose 40mm AA gun was nearly ubiquitous, used by both sides in WWII.

    You can still count money over noise, no matter it be ack-ack or robodialers.

  • After receiving a call from someone impersonating an IRS agent, I went to the FCC web site. There was a feature to chat with a live person (I think that feature is gone now).

    I reported all the information about this caller, and stated that I wanted to press charges against him for falsely representing himself as an IRS agent (over what was likely a phone call that crossed state lines). The FCC employee was taken aback. Press charges? We don't do that.

    I said, I thought the FCC is responsible for enforcin

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by JustNiz ( 692889 )

      >> I thought the FCC is responsible for enforcing certain laws, and aren't you obligated to take some sort of action when a victim wishes to press charges?

      Government services (including the Police) are there to protect the government and their interests, not the people.

  • If it were a national security issue, no one would be allowed to spoof a return number of have an anonymous number. Look how the Feds want to make sure everyone uses their real identity on the internet, but they don't seem to give a damn about the telephone network.

    And the RIAA and MPAA want to be able to trace and sue every john doe by the IP#, but they also don't give a damn about the telephone network.

    So it seems that, in a world of TCP/IP, dial-up is the frontier of the hacking world because companies a

  • I can guarantee you that 90% of those fewer than 40 call centers are owned by Level 3 or a subsidiary of Level 3. Every number I've traced (I love the ones that start with my area code then the first digit is a 1) has come from Level 3 or a Level 3 subsidiary. I've notified them multiple times of this shit, and they refuse to do nothing.

    Shut Level 3 down and hit them with criminal charges, and I guarantee you most of this will stop immediately.

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