
AT&T, Apple, Google to work on 'robocall' crackdown - PaulHoule
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-robocalls-idUSKCN10U18L
======
jimmydddd
I've always been confused as to why the phone companies refused to put any
effort into this. Do they make significant money from spam calls? I can't see
how that would be. Does anyone have any info?

In fact, when nomo robo (www.nomorobo.com) came up with a pretty good solution
(they won an FCC robo blocking contest ), the phone companies lobbied congress
to shut it down. No only were they not helping, they were blocking progress
from others.

~~~
bkruse
They do not make money from it. Actually, robocalls are really looked down
upon in the industry, as the traffic is not profitable. Imagine this - telco
carriers are charging per minute. No monthly fee, no setup fee, no per-call
fees, only per minute with 6 second minimums and 6 second increments. Now
imagine all the robocalls where they keep calls open for 3 seconds ( enough to
determine if it's a live human or answering machine ). That carrier has a lot
of resource utilization to "setup" a call, but after that, there is not much
that the carrier needs to do.

In order to combat this, all tier-1 carriers now have ASR (answer ratio) and
ACD (average call duration) minimums. In addition, if you have more than ~10%
of your calls less than 6 seconds, you get an ADDITIONAL 1-2 cent per call
surcharge. That's a lot of money given that my average cost of long distance
is .17 cents ($0.0017) per minute.

It's the second tier carriers that is "blending" this traffic with good
traffic in order to get the minimums then charge the telemarketers much higher
costs per minute.

~~~
MichaelGG
Yep and it's a huge business for them. (I work in this industry, with these
kinds of companies.) It results in great deals for non-robo callers, as they
are desperate to get good conversational traffic to add to the mix.

It depends on which provider, but the dialer penalties usually aren't that
harsh. Regardless, everyone's cautious. And they'll mix right to the limit.
Put on restrictions on how many times a number can call? They'll switch up
numbers and keep the mix perfect.

It creates a huge opportunity. If the FCC was serious, they'd just start
cracking down and push liability on down the line. Then no one would want to
take the risk. It's high volume, so without huge deposits and guarantees, no
one would touch it.

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jsymolon
How about the caller id that's being sent has to match the billing number and
company ?

The telcom companies _know_ who to bill, why do they have to develop any
method to fight abuse ?

Being a suspicious person, I suspect it'll be a new feature to add to the
bill.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caller_ID_spoofing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caller_ID_spoofing)

~~~
subway
That isn't an easy problem to solve.

What do you do when a company has a large set of numbers on a single trunk? Do
you maintain a list of authorized CID source numbers? How do you enable 3rd
parties to make calls on your behalf?

~~~
ralfd
> How do you enable 3rd parties to make calls on your behalf?

Why should that be possible? If anything the disadvantages of nuisance or even
scamming obviously far outweigh the benefits.

~~~
dangrossman
Few companies over a certain size run their own call centers. It's no
different from a software startup using AWS or Rackspace instead of building a
server room in their rented office space. I think it is both acceptable and
desirable for my phone to tell me Comcast is calling me (as they currently
do), even though it's technically an outsourced call center that makes/takes
calls for several different companies from the same building and same set of
phone numbers. Requiring caller ID match the billing address for the phone
number would be like requiring Hacker News be hosted on a cloudflare.com
subdomain because the IP space we're talking to isn't actually owned by YC.

~~~
bkruse
You can set the CallerID name to whatever you want.

We once had a customer that set their callerID name to "DEAD" to signal that
the phone number was no longer in use. People thought they were issuing
threads on their outbound calls.

------
e40
My cell and landline have been getting increasing robocalls. The ones to my
cell have randomly generated caller id's that are near my own number. One day
I got 3-4 scam/spam calls and I kept them on the line for a good 10-15
minutes. Every one was a free trip to Mexico. At the end, I would say (after
the first time) "this is the Nth time you called me to day" and the people
would actually argue with me that it was the first. Now, when I see an unknown
number, I just send it to voicemail.

~~~
nullc
> My cell and landline have been getting increasing robocalls. The ones to my
> cell have randomly generated caller id's that are near my own number.

You can exploit this, get a number in an small area code where you know no one
and do no business with. Then don't answer any calls with that area code. This
is highly effective.

~~~
smackfu
For me, they also tend to throw in large cities like New York and Chicago. A
lot of people know someone in a big city and might be willing to pick up an
unknown number.

------
phonon
I'm using the Android 6.0 "mark call as spam" feature and it's working pretty
well so far!

[https://support.google.com/nexus/answer/3459196?hl=en](https://support.google.com/nexus/answer/3459196?hl=en)

~~~
JustSomeNobody
Cool. Unfortunately, I get a new number every call, so this would do nothing.

~~~
gcb0
even if it works be ready to say goodbye soon.

I've used that feature on Google voice for years, until they decided drop it.
4yrs later they release this. let's count how long it take to go away again.

and fun fact, Google voice is the only Google product i pay to use from them

~~~
phonon
It's still there for me in GV?

[https://support.google.com/voice/answer/115089?hl=en](https://support.google.com/voice/answer/115089?hl=en)

[http://imgur.com/a/9Dvrw](http://imgur.com/a/9Dvrw)

[http://imgur.com/AxPTrUZ](http://imgur.com/AxPTrUZ)

------
mrfusion
Is something going on with these? About two months ago I started getting 3-4
spam calls per day. Never had anything before that.

~~~
koolba
> Is something going on with these? About two months ago I started getting 3-4
> spam calls per day. Never had anything before that.

I think there are "waves" of it picking up. There was a time a few years ago
where everybody and their dog was receiving a robocall about buying an
extended vehicle warranty or Rachel from card services "just checking in".

~~~
chucksmash
Don't forget the "This is your captain speaking..." one with the blasted
foghorn.

------
JohnTHaller
At get about a half dozen robocalls a day. I'm using nomorobo on the home
office VoIP line, so they only ring once. Still annoying but livable.
Unfortunately, the scammers are now setting caller ID phone numbers of XXX-
YYY-???? where XXX-YYY are the first 6 digits of your own number and the ????
are 4 random digits. As they randomly set this for each call, it gets around
nomorobo and the call comes through. As more folks start using something like
nomorobo, expect to see most scam callers adopt this approach.

~~~
bkruse
That's correct and could cause the opposite problem (where a legitimate
callerID gets blocked).

Smaller telcos restrict the outbound callerID to only CallerIDs (DIDs) that
you own. This would be very difficult to enforce for a wholesale carrier -
where their customer is an aggregate of thousands of customers.

~~~
MichaelGG
It's not even feasible. Like IP, the outbound calls go via many paths. So like
ISPs almost never filter your source address, same for telcos. Small ones with
tiny accounts might, but no one even remotely on wholesale.

But changing IDs is already illegal, so the FCC could decide to chase it down
if enough people complain.

~~~
MertsA
Do you have a source for the claim of caller ID spoofing being illegal? AFAIK
that's only illegal if you're using it to further a fraud.

~~~
MichaelGG
Yeah I knew someone would point that out. In the case of evading robo laws,
it'd be fraud, right?

------
runako
For a while, I used Jolly Roger [1] as a sort of DDOS / attempt to get my
number removed from the call lists. I have no problem paying for it if it were
integrated/automatic. But after a while, I just got tired of manually adding
it to a call.

[1] - [http://www.jollyrogertelco.com](http://www.jollyrogertelco.com)

~~~
galori
I just spent an hour listening to some of their recorded call sessions on
youtube, it is hillarious. ([https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3OxCWLEmoIhNMm-
hnvBm9Q](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3OxCWLEmoIhNMm-hnvBm9Q))

It's also genius, if we can automate transferring telemarketers to stuff like
this, we'd be using technology against them, use up all their human paid time
and make it unprofitable to spam call.

------
msoad
So a contact in your phonebook can have many phone numbers associated with it.
We can make an open source contact that includes all of "possibly spam"
numbers and if you have that contact on your phone, you'll see "possibly spam"
is calling.

~~~
Avenger42
That's exactly what I've been doing for years. I also gave it a custom
ringtone that's 4 seconds of silence and turned vibration off, so unless I'm
actually doing something with my phone, or else listening to music, I don't
notice the interruption.

The issue is that nowadays, I rarely get spam from the same numbers multiple
times. They just generate a new fake number if the first one didn't get a
response.

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anexprogrammer
We need something similar in UK and Europe. For the last year I've been
getting 3-5 calls a day on weekdays and a couple of silents. Always the same
scams and spam - Bank misselling, upgraded boiler or glazing. Something
changed or I was just lucky up til the start of this year, but it's got really
annoying.

I wish I could simply globally block international and unknown numbers unless
on a whitelist. Every blocking solution I've seen works on individual caller
IDs, which is obviously useless for witheld or spoofed calls. Sending to
voicemail is a sort-of solution, but results in a lot of half scripts recorded
- they must always start speaking the moment the answering message starts
playing.

~~~
hackinthebochs
If you're on android and are rooted, root call blocker works great. I had to
do this a few months ago and only let through calls in my address book. Funny
thing is all this started after I added my number to the do not call list

------
sirtastic
For the last 2 years I've been receiving calls from some call center in India
sometimes up to 5x a day asking if I want viagra. I've asked, pleaded,
demanded and have blocked by now hundreds of the numbers they call me with
which can range from a local number to one across the country.

I've had my number since I was a teenager and don't want to stop using it but
I've been seriously considering it lately because the calls feel like
harassment. I don't get how they are able to do this and why something hasn't
been done about it.

------
mrfusion
I've heard there's a do not disturb hack for the iPhone. You can set it to do
not disturb but still allow numbers in your contacts through.

I'm really tempted to try that but I'm worried about missing important calls.

It would be neat if they simply let you block every number that's ever been
reported. Sort of like a real time global blacklist.

~~~
beachstartup
> _I 'm really tempted to try that but I'm worried about missing important
> calls._

i think most people are starting to realize that there really isn't any such
thing as an important call from a number you don't recognize.

~~~
my_first_acct
Unfortunately, if you are dealing with medical issues (your own or someone
else's), you are going to get lots of important calls from numbers you don't
recognize, and from phones with blocked caller id (doctors, for instance).

And because of privacy considerations, they are often reluctant to leave a
detailed message.

~~~
ghaff
Yep, when I get a call claiming to be a phone number that's not likely scammy
(e.g. a state that no close friend or family member lives in or is visiting),
I hesitate to just ignore it a lot of the time. Certainly if it's a possibly
relevant area code, I'll tend to pick up.

This isn't because I can't resist picking up the phone. But checking for
voicemail after the fact takes even more time and cycles. And I don't want to
end up playing telephone tag if someone actually does need to reach me.

------
stretchwithme
Excuse me if I am less than enthused with AT&T being involved.

They send me physical mail addressed to resident. I called them to cancel it.
They took my name and soon no more mail is going to resident. Its addressed to
me personally.

I later call to cancel that mail. Soon, no more mail is going to me. Its going
to resident again.

~~~
MBCook
The ridiculous thing is even after the FCC said it was OK numerous times AT&T
still refuse to do anything to work on robocalls claiming that they needed
judicial approval.

The FCC had to pass a memorandum (or something) earlier this year explicitly
spelling out the AT&T had absolutely no grounds for their believe and was
allowed to and SHOULD work on the issue.

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taf2
Interesting no one has mentioned this page in the thread:
[https://www.fcc.gov/general/traffic-
pumping](https://www.fcc.gov/general/traffic-pumping)

As I understand there is an incentive model in place to encourage this type of
traffic.

~~~
bkruse
That's not true, the carriers are compensated through CABS (carrier access
billing) based on number of minutes, not number of connected calls.

Carriers have to accept traffic from other carriers, even if they have not
paid their CABS bill.

Right now, no one is paying anyone. That's why fair cross-carrier compensation
and flat-rates are a big talk in the FCC instead of what's called "Tariff
rates" which vary by carrier and by destination.

Freeconferencecall.com exists because of CABS and having very high tariff
rates. They do NOT want lots of short duration calls. That doesn't help them
at all.

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mirekrusin
People should stop using phone numbers all together, just 4g signal is fine.

------
dang
Url changed from [http://www.fiercetelecom.com/telecom/at-t-to-lead-
robocall-s...](http://www.fiercetelecom.com/telecom/at-t-to-lead-robocall-
strike-force-calls-for-industry-wide-cooperation), which points to this.

