
AT&T, Apple, Google to work on 'robocall' crackdown - 0x7fffffff
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-robocalls-idUSKCN10U18L
======
fizzbatter
I wonder what it is about Google Voice (or my backend T-Mobile number) that
results in me rarely getting these? I _never_ get these on my ~10yr old Google
Voice number, and my ~2yr old T-Mobile number gets a random call maybe three
times a year.

I don't take any special steps against spam calls.. what might i be doing
different? I don't get it.

~~~
condescendence
I've been with TMobile since VoiceStream Wireless PCS.

Not a single robot call, ever. Honestly I don't even think I've gotten a
telemarketer or salesperson either.

~~~
puddintane
T-Mobile as well here and I have never once received a robocall.

I wonder if they are actively trying to do something to prevent this already
and now AT&T wants to join?

~~~
maxerickson
I would guess it comes down to the old rules about telemarketers not calling
cell phones. If you are in a 'pure' cell phone exchange (the 3 digits after
the area code), the number is probably excluded from some dialing lists by
inertia.

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S_A_P
I get between 1 and 10 robocalls per day. I finally got fed up, I added my
number to donotcall.gov and I am not documenting each call and filing
complaints with FCC for each. My wife is getting particularly sinister calls.
She was getting calls several times a week telling her to call a number as she
was being sued by the IRS. Even though I know this is completely bullshit,
actually receiving the call is unnerving and I could see the less savvy phone
users as being scared into being fooled. I wonder how some people sleep...

~~~
s_q_b
I get these too.

They're very threatening, saying that you'll be sued and charged criminally.
It's obviously bollocks, but I can see how an elderly or less savvy individual
could panic and pay the money.

Personally, I like to reverse troll them. I put on my best impression of my
military colleagues neutral tone and say:

"Sir, this a secure line. Any unauthorized use of this system may be a
violation of United States Federal law, punishable by up to twenty five years
in a detention facility. This call may be recorded and traced for identity
verification purposes.

Please provide your 14-digit identity code. If an incorrect code is provided,
or no code is entered within three minutes, recovery procedures will be
initiated."

It's interesting to see who freezes, who panics, who hangs up, and who doubles
down.

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overcast
I've been on donotcall.gov since 2009, and I was fine up until about six
months ago, now it's a handful of nonsense calls per day. What's amazing, is
within about thirty seconds of double checking my status on donotcall.gov, I
got another robocall from nonsense. Infuriating this can't be policed.

------
mikeash
Around iOS 4, I jailbroke my phone and installed an extension that would look
up the phone number for every incoming call and tell me what it was. It
reliably told me about spam calls without having to answer them.

Jailbreaking wasn't really viable long term, so I lost that. Now I just get
the city and state, which isn't very useful. Sometimes I answer and get a
spammer, sometimes I don't and let legitimate callers leave a message. It
works, but I wish I had the jailbreak extension still.

When Apple said they were adding caller ID extensions in iOS 10 I got excited
about being able to rebuild the feature. Unfortunately, all they can do is
provide a list of number/name mappings, they can't do dynamic lookups when a
call comes in. Useless! So I'm a little unimpressed with Apple here, since
there's such a great solution they're blocking.

~~~
chris_7
I just want to send all non-contact calls to voicemail, and defer those
notifications until the end of the day. The idea that anyone can immediately
demand synchronous communication from anyone else is really weird.

~~~
JadeNB
> The idea that anyone can immediately demand synchronous communication from
> anyone else is really weird.

I think that a more apt description is that anyone can _request_ synchronous
communication, which doesn't sound so weird to me.

~~~
chris_7
Phone calls cover my iPhone with a full-screen modal and make it completely
flip out for 20 seconds, buzzing or making noise. It's very demanding and
distracting, I wouldn't mind it as much if they appeared just like any other
app.

------
jackcosgrove
I hardly use my phone anymore. More than half of the calls I receive are
robocalls.

I'd get rid of phone service if I could still call 911.

~~~
MrFoof
Sadly, in my case, it's closer to 90-95%.

The new rule is if I don't know who it is via caller ID (by having an existing
contact show), I immediately decline the call. If they leave no voicemail,
that's it. If they leave a voicemail, I listen. 95% of those are the
robocaller messages, in which then the number is added to a robocaller contact
that is blocked -- and now contains close to 300 phone numbers.

~~~
bigjimmyk3
The problem with this approach is that Caller ID is a lie, so they have an
infinite supply of phone numbers to use.

Source: received several calls from 123-456-7890.

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ocdtrekkie
The title is oddly limiting, to one cell carrier and two OS developers. The
list is as follows, and includes ALL national mobile carriers, several ISPs,
most OS developers, many major hardware developers.

It's continually annoying that headlines focus on Google and Apple to the
detriment of everyone else. I recall recent studies done by large groups of
researchers that included a couple Googlers, and was then headlined as "Google
publishes..."

AT&T, Apple, ATIS, Bandwidth, Blackberry,

British Telecom, CenturyLink, Charter, Cincinnati Bell, Comcast,

Consumers Union, Cox, Ericsson, FairPoint, Frontier,

Google, Inteliquent, Level 3, LG, Microsoft,

Nokia, Qualcomm, Samsung, Silver Star, Sirius XM,

Sprint, Syniverse, T-Mobile, U.S. Cellular, Verizon

West, Windstream, and X5 Solutions

------
ocdtrekkie
My Windows 10 Mobile device blissfully has a "Block caller" button. I've been
using it religiously for the last three weeks in particular. I won't mind if
someone finally starts gutting these numbers at the source.

I've been contributing my block list to 800notes.com, where every number I've
ever gotten robocalls from is already so marked. I feel like it should be easy
for companies to take this sort of information which is openly contributed by
users to these web databases, and start cutting off the providers who dole out
these phone numbers.

It doesn't matter if the callers are from overseas, because the numbers are
issued by US telecoms.

~~~
rbritton
That used to work for me. Recently, however, I've been getting the calls from
different numbers every time. The new pattern seems to be to grab a number for
a few days, use it, dump, and repeat. Looking at the 800notes for the last
several I've received, all of the comments are less than a few days older than
the call I received.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
Yeah, I agree, the rotation rate seems very high right now, and they're mostly
the same robocallers. This just means, to me, it should be very easy for
telecoms to suss out who is buying these numbers, and through what telecom.

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_greim_
When I receive these calls, I set my phone down and go about my business,
letting the robot play itself out. I figure every CPU cycle wasted on me
spares someone else.

------
adultSwim
Finally. Been waiting for anti-spam tech to be applied to incoming phone
calls.

Seems harder to do in practice than email. Can't scan content of messages.
Harder to have end users involved in the training.

~~~
criddell
I don't understand why reliable caller id isn't possible, especially now that
so many calls are VOIP from end-to-end.

I wish there was some type of TLS for phone calls and I could set my phone to
never ring unless the caller can be authenticated.

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yumaikas
As soon as someone doesn't acknowledge my name when I pick up the phone, I
hang up on them, since I figure only a robot would ignore such basic
etiquette. Thankfully, I don't get robocalled that often.

Now, hooking a telemarketer up to a robot
([http://jollyrogertelephone.com/about/](http://jollyrogertelephone.com/about/))
on the other hand, I have yet to do.

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tkinom
Android, iOS can build a "Report Spam/RoboCall" Button in the "Answer Screen"
that will report the number to a local / central database.

It auto black list the number in local database.

In the cental database, when that number reach N reported (N / day, week),
Android, iOS can grey/black list them and warning the user about the number
before user receive the call.

~~~
djrogers
That works fine, until the robocallers get another batch of phone numbers to
tie to their VoIP systems and the blocked ones roll back in to general use.

I already get robocalls that are targeted to my own area code and region, and
the same calls from multiple numbers. Cycling through those won't like add too
much burden to the robot unless there's a heavy price to pay for a new batch
of numbers.

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rhinoceraptor
The FTC ran a contest at Defcon last year to fight robocalls:

[https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/contests/robocalls-
humanity-...](https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/contests/robocalls-humanity-
strikes-back)

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wnevets
is anyone going to tell me this violates the first amendment?

~~~
jasonjei
I think this is a valid question--not sure why people want to bury this post,
because I'm interested to hear this out.

I think it's the same argument and laws that apply against emails. Some say
that it's equally "first amendment" to block emails and phone calls. (IANAL)
[0]

[0]
[http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/spam](http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/spam)

~~~
jasode
Based on the type of companies participating with FCC (e.g. Google and Apple),
my guess is that the technology will be a blacklist/whitelist
"trust/reputation" database similar to web certificates. With such a database
in place, smartphones like iPhone/Android will have updated software that can
optionally screen the call's caller-id reputation. (Analogous to a web browser
url bar have a "padlock" or blocking https pages from loading at all with bad
certificates.)

(If the above implementation is accurate, it means blocking robocalls will be
feasible on smartphones but not legacy analog land line phones.)

It wouldn't be a First Amendment issue because the owners of the phones can
opt into blocking robotelemarketing callers. Same concept as AdBlock or
putting "127.0.0.1 ads.doubleclick.net" in your HOSTS.

If modifying your HOSTS file or adding a email routing rule is GMail/MSOutlook
to redirect mail to a trash folder is violating someone elses First Amendment
rights, it's not an argument I've ever seen presented.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
Note that "Google and Apple" aren't representative of the types of companies
here, the media just obsesses about them. There are 33 companies in all.
Mostly telecoms.

~~~
jasode
The _" Robocall Strike Force"_ also includes smartphone manufacturers such as
Ericsson, LG, Microsoft, Nokia, Qualcomm, Samsung so it would be misleading to
think it's just 2 Silicon Valley technology companies and 31 telecoms.

From the article, it looks like intelligence about VOIP is part of the
potential solution.

[https://www.wirelessweek.com/news/2016/08/us-carriers-
join-a...](https://www.wirelessweek.com/news/2016/08/us-carriers-join-apple-
google-33-member-robocall-strike-force)

