
Ask HN: Real reason why phone companies can't shut down phone scams - shutupalready
I&#x27;m wondering about the technical reason why phone companies can&#x27;t kill off the phone scammers like those pretending to be from Microsoft or Windows tech support.<p>Phone calls are bidirectional protocols; therefore, all information needed to identify the originator <i>must</i> exist somewhere inside the system, otherwise your voice could not be routed back to the originator.<p>For example, in the North American phone system at least, the originating number is always available to the phone company through ANI (Automatic number identification): <i>&quot;ANI is different, conceptually and technically, than caller ID service. A caller&#x27;s telephone number and line type are captured by ANI service even if caller ID blocking is activated.&quot;</i>[1]<p>Even if ANI doesn&#x27;t exist on calls from, for example, an Indian call center to the U.S., the connection information must exist at some level.<p>Regardless of how difficult it might be to prosecute overseas scammers, surely the phone companies could offer a service where if I pressed &quot;*SCAM&quot; on my keypad during a phone call to mark it as a scammer, and 10 other people did the same, that incoming number could be blocked, no?<p>The only way I see that not working is if the foreign phone company is not sending the originating phone number when completing a connection to the U.S. In other words, the Indian phone company is behaving like a NAT and all phone calls from India look identical to the U.S. phone company.<p>[1] http:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Automatic_number_identification
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psykovsky
It's so simple... It's not that they can't, it's more that they don't want to.
They're profiting from it also.

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shutupalready
Sorry, but that explanation doesn't hold up.

Long distance calls in bulk are so cheap that the phone companies might be
making a fraction of one cent for each call. On the other hand, this creates
so tremendous ill will against the phone companies that it's hardly worth it.

The other day I spent 10 minutes complaining to my local phone company about
scam calls. Even at minimum wage for the customer support person, dealing with
my single complaint probably cost them more money than they made carrying many
hundreds of scam calls.

Some Caribbean phone companies have been known to profit handsomely from
operators of 900 and 976 pay-per-call scams in which the customers are billed
hundreds of dollars directly by the phone company. Maybe you're thinking of
those. But that's a different matter.

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psykovsky
Not, it isn't a different matter, it's exactly why things are the way they
are. Doesn't matter which phone company is profiting as long as one of them
is. The others who are not profiting just can't refuse to route calls to those
who are because they also serve legitimate customers and it would cause major
pain.

