
Ask HN: So why am I still robocalled? - rhacker
It&#x27;s 2019, the do not call list was created in 1991. I get about 25 robocalls per day.
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instaheat
Most of them are referred to as willful violators. To them, less than 1% of
people will chase them down, so the risk is worth it.

What do most of us do? Block the numbers, install apps to block them, yell at
them, curse their name, not pick up.

Consequently, if you can find out who they are as AnimalMuppet rightly
indicated, you can make them pay YOU. Personally, I've collected nearly $4,000
generated from carefully drafted letters to the violators. I am sending off a
demand for another settlement payment soon, I just haven't had the time to
schlep on down to the post office.

The money represents an out of court settlement. It works. They would rather
pay you and have you shut up, than you drag them into court. USUALLY, you have
them dead to rights and the process of discovery should you go to court would
reveal they did in fact call you.

It's an investment of your time, you have to take the call and convince the
salesperson they are about to make a sale. Usually you can get the info if
they think they are going to make a sale. I feign interest in what they are
selling. Some of them are really good and won't give up any information
because they understand the risk of doing so. I've had both experienced and
non-experienced reps on my phone.

Funny thing is, I get less calls now. They've practically stopped at least for
one vertical - auto warranties. I suspect I may be blacklisted or they somehow
share information with each other, because there is a very high probability
that if you call me, your company will be writing me a check.

I am happy to divulge more information, my friend has written an Ebook on the
subject in detail complete with template letters and is a complete "how to"
guide on collecting money from the robocallers. It's extremely satisfying.
Only cost $47.

~~~
elipsey
How do you identify the caller?

All of the robo calls are I get are clearly from spoofed numbers; they spoof
my area code from a previous location, but are clearly targeting people in SF,
e.g. tax scams on foreign workers, stuff I can't understand in Chinese.
Everyone I know gets spam with similar spoofing.

If you'll only tell me for $47, color me skeptical. :)

~~~
instaheat
It's simple, you ask them who they are. The ones that are not based out of the
US you cannot collect from.

I got a call from Florida. Picked it up. Pretended to be interested. They
coughed it up 45 minutes into the call after pretending to want to check their
BBB page. I hate to give away all the info from the Ebook. Everyone is
skeptical. Myself included. I paid him the money because he put forth the
effort to put the information together, and he's my friend, I trust him. It's
paid off, clearly.

~~~
instaheat
Not sure why I am being downvoted. How else do you expect to extract
information out of someone who doesn't want to tell you who they are
necessarily? Think about it logically. I really don't know why I bother trying
to explain it actually. I'll just keep continuing to cash checks in my spare
time, and you skeptics can continue to get calls.

~~~
cimmanom
Because you’re advertising a paid ebook instead of being helpful?

~~~
instaheat
I gave some helpful tips. Everyone expects me to go into excruciating detail
for free. Cheap skates. Bums.

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MiddleEndian
Foreign countries aren't subject to US phone laws. Anyone making any call in
or to the US can just lie about their caller ID, and the phone company
forwards that lie to you.

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URSpider94
1\. Last I heard, the office responsible for DNC enforcement had literally 4
staff members. The chances of getting caught and punished by the government
are minuscule.

2\. The rise of IP telephony has made it cost effective to run call centers
and bot farms overseas to target the US, making it hard to get jurisdiction
over violators.

3\. IP telephony also makes it easy to cloak the source of calls, making them
hard to trace.

4\. Phone companies have been dragging their heels on implementing a
validation method for caller ID, which makes number-based blacklists useless.

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AnimalMuppet
Because nobody goes to jail for violating the do not call list.

People _do_ get fined... but you have to find them first.

~~~
WorldMaker
…and the fines have to be big enough to matter, otherwise the occasional fine
is just one more line of overhead in the project budget.

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yellow_lead
Because of how Telecom works, robocallers can put whatever originating number
they want in the SIP header. This will eventually come to your phone, usually
as a number in the same NPA-NXX (area code, first 3) to trick you to pick it
up.

Carriers that originate a call can know if their customer doing so owns the
number, but all the other carriers along the many hops it may take，have no way
of verifying that one of the previous carriers owns that number.

The solution is a combination of the Stir/Shaken implementation and the proof
of ownership for telephone numbers that the FCC is starting to ask carriers to
implement.

Anyways, because people can fake the orig number, and SS7 is massive, it's
nearly impossible to track down violators like this, given a number.

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unsignedint
I have started telling people that I need to whitelist them in order for me to
take a call from them. If I have to expect call from someone new (e.g. need to
expect callback from some vendor, etc.) usually by asking "what number should
I expect a call from?" \-- usually they are fine answering that question, but
if they won't or can't, I demand call back number that I can actually call, in
response to voice mail.

I understand not everyone can do this (especially for business expecting
inbound calls) but at least for personal numbers, I really want to see the
social norm shifting to "have the caller on a whitelist or they are ignored."

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BA4gDY-cqjsEPWn
Same reason Google/Facebook doesn't fix ad fraud. ;-)

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jonny_eh
Recent podcast episode from the show Reply All about this:
[https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/135-the-robocall-
conun...](https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/135-the-robocall-conundrum)

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8bitsrule
An alternative approach: I NEVER answer calls that don't have a user-ID that I
know (or a number I recognize). IMO, any legit business, charity, whatever
will use that advantage.

Picking up, just saying hello, that's a 'real number'. They'll be back.

In some cases, the same (no-ID) number will call several times over a period
of days. I add the number to my blacklist and the phone might ring _once_.

As time goes by, the volume of this type of call drops away to one or two a
day.

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paco3346
Surprisingly I've had the number of robocalls go down since I started politely
answering them. I'm never rude but ask for ridiculous things like negative
interest rates on my credit card. I never hear from them again whereas before
I'd keep getting the same call.

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appsonify
This is why I use 2nd Line. the voice quality is shit but its free so.

