US Attorneys General Will Take Legal Action Against Telecom Providers Enabling Robocalls (engadget.com) 69
The Attorneys General of all 50 states have joined forces in hopes of giving teeth to the seemingly never-ending fight against robocalls. Engadget reports: North Carolina AG Josh Stein, Indiana AG Todd Rokita and Ohio AG Dave Yost are leading the formation of the new Anti-Robocall Litigation Task Force. In Stein's announcement, he said the group will focus on taking legal action against telecoms, particularly gateway providers, allowing or turning a blind eye to foreign robocalls made to US numbers. He explained that gateway providers routing foreign phone calls into the US telephone network have the responsibility under the law to ensure the traffic they're bringing in is legal. Stein said that they mostly aren't taking any action to keep robocalls out of the US phone network, though, and they're even intentionally allowing robocall traffic through in return for steady revenue in many cases.
Stein said in a statement: "We're... going to take action against phone companies that violate state and federal laws. I'm proud to create this nationwide task force to hold companies accountable when they turn a blind eye to the robocallers they're letting on to their networks so they can make more money. I've already brought one pathbreaking lawsuit against an out-of-state gateway provider, and I won't hesitate to take legal action against others who break our laws and bombard North Carolinians with these harmful, unlawful calls."
Stein said in a statement: "We're... going to take action against phone companies that violate state and federal laws. I'm proud to create this nationwide task force to hold companies accountable when they turn a blind eye to the robocallers they're letting on to their networks so they can make more money. I've already brought one pathbreaking lawsuit against an out-of-state gateway provider, and I won't hesitate to take legal action against others who break our laws and bombard North Carolinians with these harmful, unlawful calls."
jail time (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm all for solving the problem, I must get 3 calls a day about home energy projects.
Since no one will go to prison it kinda doesn't matter at this point - too little too late. Why wait until now? They could have gone after much deeper pockets a couple of years ago.
Re: jail time (Score:2)
Re: jail time (Score:2)
Re: jail time (Score:4, Insightful)
Realistically, the only way this would work for Telcos is if they are legally bound to throttle the bandwidth, and ultimately cut off, providers that refuse to action reports. No exceptions, including the "too big to cut off" getout many larger ESPs rely on to avoid having a properly staffed and empowered abuse department. I can't see that happening, because it will absolutely include state-level telcos with all the fallout that will entail. Then again, I'm pretty sure there are lot fewer largescale robocallers than there are equivalent spammers, and maybe if most of the bad eggs are in a small number of baskets it might be worth a shot.
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The phone network is way different than spam, though. At some point, one of the telcos knows exactly where the calls are coming from, and can cut that customer off. If they don't, then the next downstream telco should basically stop accepting ALL traffic from them.
Same for foreign stuff coming into the US. The foreign telcos don't do their job to prevent robocalls? Cut them off until they do.
Re: jail time (Score:2)
I don't think they're allowed to listen to your calls for such things. Perhaps for technical debugging, but to catch fraud? Sounds like warrant territory. But you need a judge and cause for each warrant.
"Calls may be recorded" notice (Score:2)
Or take advantage of the two-party consent provision of many states' laws. A carrier whose customer has filed complaints about robocalls can play a 5-second recorded message at the start of each call: "This T-Mobile customer is helping fight fraud. Calls may be recorded."
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I dont see why robocallers would care even slightly about such a message.
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I agree that robocallers wouldn't care. It would mostly serve to satisfy the legal requirement of consent to record that reanjr mentioned, in case someone other than a robocaller calls a number.
Re: jail time (Score:1)
Re: jail time (Score:2)
If the customer is complaining, why do you need to listen to the call?
Re: jail time (Score:1)
Re: jail time (Score:2)
Why do you need to verify it? If X customers report someone, they get shut down. No need to listen to anyone's calls.
Re: jail time (Score:1)
Re: jail time (Score:4, Interesting)
>"One more complaint, listen to the call and verify itÃ(TM)s a legitimate robocall."
Customers simply need to ability to report such calls instantly by hanging up and dialing a code. Any number that gets more than X reports in X days is just automatically banned at the carrier level. The problem would solve itself pretty quickly. And it would work against ALL spam calls, including "surveys" and "political" and "sales calls from someone with whom you have an existing relationship" because all of those are just as bad as other robocalls.
I am extremely protective of my cell number, giving it only to friends and family and work. Never to any other company or business or organization for any reason. Years ago I STILL had to install an app to block all incoming calls from those not in my contact list. Not everyone can do that, though. And there is no such protection for my home land line.
Re: jail time (Score:2)
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> Why wait until now?
They gave them some time since STIR/SHAKEN to get their act together, especially in light of the economic disruption. Without auth this was harder.
Now that they CAN they DID NOT. So they're getting smacked.
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Since no one will go to prison it kinda doesn't matter at this point
Exactly. If nobody goes to jail or pays a fine that really impacts their standard of living they will continue to commit the crime. In fact, I ***never*** answer my landline realtime, always wait for what I hear on the answering machine. Very rarely do I get "a real phone call." For my cell, if I don't recognize the number, I ain't answering it. My friends will first send me a text "ok to call?" prior to making the phone call itself. And I do the same myself.
Which begs the question, are traditional teleph
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I've been saying for a long time that a couple of well-placed cruise missiles will solve the problem. Knock out India's Internet connection to the rest of the world and keep it off until they arrest and execute these criminals. Any more calls and boom, they're gone again. India is unwilling to take care of the problem, we can do it.
BTW, phone calls have been largely killed as a communication tool for many people and businesses just because of the number of scam calls. I have customers that won't answer
About time someone make robocalls risky/unprofitab (Score:2)
Now the smaller provider exception has expired, and wiping out robocalls is such a popular and easy win, the incentives are aligning to wipe this vile industry from the phone networks.
Some good news!
Start with the scams targeting the elderly (Score:5, Insightful)
And political calls.
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Political calls will never be suppressed. The politicians will see to it.
An end-run around it could be taxing each call at 1 cent. It wouldn't be noticable to the average person, but those making 100's of 1000's of calls would. And that would include the politicians. Could they exempt themselves? Maybe, but that would at least bring some heat their way from the general public.
Forget to make your payments? (Score:2)
Caifornia Too Corrupted By Telcoms (Score:2)
Free Speech (Score:2)
It's free speech, how can they legislate against it?
Re:Free Speech (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Free Speech (Score:4, Interesting)
free speech protections only apply to people, not automated dialers. if you make a call by manually entering or selecting the number, and ready to speak when they answer, then i'd say it is protected speech.
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Many of these systems do random calls to a list of numbers to see if anyone answers. If someone answers, they log the number and either try to quickly route the call to a warm body that tries to sell you something, or they note the time of day and schedule a follow-up call by a warm body near the same time.
Any company that allows a phone call to enter the phone system with a fraudulent Calling Party ID should have to verify who is actually initiating the call and eliminate the bad actors, similar to what e
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>"if you make a call by manually entering or selecting the number, and ready to speak when they answer, then i'd say it is protected speech."
No, not really. Calling or texting my personal phone is not a public forum in any way. It is direct, targeted, interruptive notification that demands immediate attention. That would be like saying that anyone is allowed to put a speaker in my house and/or car and/or on my back and can play annoying ring sounds through it any time they want or however they want.
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Free speech doesn't mean other people are obligated to listen to you.
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Freedom of speech protects the content of the speech, not the manner of the speech. Nobody's stopping robocallers from getting their message out in the regular postal junk mail.
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a) they already do that too
b) I would rather receive electronic calls than have them kill trees and mail me bits of it to dispose of.
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a) they already do that too b) I would rather receive electronic calls than have them kill trees and mail me bits of it to dispose of.
Junk mail has always been treated as "no charge" fireplace fuel in my house. It saves space in the landfills for REAL TRASH
They gonna target politicians? (Score:3)
Fuck that noise. If you use a machine to call me then you can fuck right off to jail.
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politicians should also have a carve-out for the receiving end of robocalling.
Caller ID (Score:2)
is it still a problem with callers calling with fake caller ID or no caller ID? otherwise, how is it determined that a given call is a robocall (the practice of automated mass pre-dialing and passing answers to either a playback recording or some human who can see your name and number on their little screen)? is it just being on a list of numbers that are from complaints?
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>"is it still a problem with callers calling with fake caller ID or no caller ID?
To the end user- yes. To your CARRIER? No. They know exactly where the calls are coming from. Customers should not need to report "phone numbers". They should be able to hang up and dial a code that flags the previous incoming call at the carrier as spam automatically. It would work with all phones (cell, land, voip).
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To the end user- yes. To your CARRIER? No.
Your carrier probably only knows what carrier is trunking the call to them, not who is originating the call. It is unlikely that your carrier has any business relationship with or even the ability to identify what company or person is placing the robocall.
Your suggestion is still a good idea for identifying the percentage of incoming traffic on a given trunk that is spam, and your carrier could choose to stop peering with a carrier that crosses some threshold percentage of spam. But should that percentage b
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>"Your carrier probably only knows what carrier is trunking the call to them, not who is originating the call. It is unlikely that your carrier has any business relationship with or even the ability to identify what company or person is placing the robocall."
Thanks, that is a good clarification. You are correct, your carrier absolutely knows which carrier placed the call to their network, but not necessarily the true user on that other carrier.
>"Your suggestion is still a good idea for identifying th
I support (Score:1)
Ban caller id spoofing (Score:4, Interesting)
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Businesses use this to "spoof" their main office number when outbound calls are made from individual, direct-dial extensions.
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Businesses use this to "spoof" their main office number when outbound calls are made from individual, direct-dial extensions.
That's a legitimate business use, and it's not really "spoofing." I think what OP meant is the calls from "Apple" or the "US Government" that people get. That should be a crime. I get calls about my "iCloud" account at least once each week, and a few years ago I went through a stretch of receiving messages from someone identifying themselves as the IRS, and the Caller ID said "US Government." A lot of people, especially the elderly, do not understand that malicious actors can just fake the Caller ID. There
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It goes the other way, too. A customer's PBX (or equivalent) can set CID to give the caller's DID number (or any other number, for that matter). That's the feature.
The bug is that the carrier never gets involved. The customer should have to register all their active DID numbers with the carrier, then if a call comes through one of the trunk lines to the carrier with a CID that's not registered, the carrier blocks the call. If calls come from one of the registered DID numbers in a pattern indicating robocall
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Businesses use this to "spoof" their main office number when outbound calls are made from individual, direct-dial extensions.
And certain government agencies, like law enforcement and public hospital & public healthcare services, also spoof it "for various reasons".
I can't tell you how I know that actually happens due to NDA restrictions, but IT ACTUALLY HAPPENS.
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I used to set my SIP service to spoof my landline number so callee's saw a recognisable number they would recognise & could return calls on with a fixed or mobile phone. It's currently pointing at our SIP incoming local number & was using one of our mobile numbers for a while.
There are too many legitimate uses for number spoofing to simply ban it outright. Intent has to be part of the reasoning.
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They could have an authentication method where the VOIP provider calls each number to ensure the owner of the number actually wants the number used this way. I have had calls supposedly from government department numbers, police, random numbers on the same prefix as my cell phone and I have heard about them spoofing hospitals.
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Quit my home phone 25 years ago due to robocalls (Score:4, Informative)
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Robocalls made landline phones useless, so I changed my phone line to a 'dry' DSL. I'm sure I wasn't the only one. The phone companies must have lost much more than they gained from the incessant spam.
Didn't they find your DSL line? They found mine, my cell phone. Even if I change numbers, they find it.
Anti-American? (Score:1)
These telecom companies are making money, which is the most American thing one can do. It seems rather anti-American for the Attorneys General to go after profit seeking companies, which are the backbone of this country and the only thing propping up our failed government.
Calls should have negative pricing. (Score:2)
It is time to make the price negative. Every incoming call should give me a credit of 1 cent whether I pick it up or not. Ring my phone? Pay me 1 cent. The Telco can add a small handling fee it needs to collect it from the caller. I will pay to make out going calls.
For normal people incoming and outgoing calls balance out and you just pay the handling fee. Sp
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Idea (Score:2)
The amount is trivial if there's a charge accidentally made to a legitimate caller, the spammers would be put out of business, and the phone company would be incentivized to make it happen.
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That would require that the intermediary (phone company) snoop on the call to capture touch tones which would open up a whole other can of worms if that ability was implemented.
I would also imagine that all calls, these days, are trunked over a network which means that they are likely encrypted between carriers if not between the end points.
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You think the phone company stops listening to DTMF after the call is routed? I guess that could be...
It is true. Phone companies disengage the DTMF receiver function in your call once the call connects to the far end.
Legacy phone switches had limited DTMF receiver resources, and adding more DTMF receivers was costly (hardware & licensing fees, or simply "structurally limited" in the switch design). Telco engineers used "sizing tables" to select the number of various resources they needed based on predicted call volume.
In the world of "soft" phone switches these resources consume CPU & memory resour
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Interesting observations (Score:3)
This morning, 6:30 am to be exact, some robocaller called. The caller ID said it was from a really remote town in the state, population 1,368. I knew it was bogus but I decided to answer it. The tell tail sign is an audio "boop" on the line. Happens every time. What's also interesting to me is that the scammer calls pretty much disappeared for the month or so before the primary election. That means the PACs are probably using the same services as the scammers so they know who they are and could make that information public. Why isn't anyone doxxing, swatting, or canceling these outfits?
Finally, only took them two decades... (Score:2)
It is NOT like the telephone companies don't know who is making all the SPAM calls. To claim otherwise is just BS. They bill for the calls made, THEY KNOW.
It's just that the old land-based telecoms went from having regional monopolies to losing most of their customers to cell phone technology. So you have these legacy telecoms looking for any source of funds $$$. (And as I typed this, a "Scam Likely" call rang.) It's like how most local newspapers now print ads that are reminiscent of the underground ra
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I guess you didn't even read the summary, much less TFA. The problem isn't, herp derp, 'old land-based telecoms', it is small gateway providers that accept foreign calls into the US telephone networks. One such company named in TFA, which was charged with sending 65 million calls to NC residents, is 'Articul8', founded WAY back... in 2015.
Wolf (Score:2)
These eunuchs have been crying wolf for decades already. Expect zero progress.
Spectrum Helps (Score:2)
I'm not particularly crazy about the Internet, TV and phone service Spectrum provides me. But they _do_ have an anti-robot call service I've enabled (free too!) that seems to catch a goodly number of spammers. The phone still rings, but the caller ID window has a spam warning message. It doesn't catch them all, but every bit helps.