
Ringless voice mails from telemarketers - HarryHirsch
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/03/business/phone-ringless-voicemail-fcc-telemarketer.html
======
extrapickles
The article doesn't describe how the technology works.

Due to the slow speed (100 voicemail/min) its likely what they are doing is
initiating a call far enough for the phone system to busy out your phone, then
very quickly placing a second call that the phone system sends straight to
voicemail as your phone is busy. Once this call starts to hit voicemail, the
original call is dropped.

I doubt phone companies let people directly send voicemail to people as they
wouldn't be billing for that.

~~~
caseysoftware
That's exactly how it works. While I was at Twilio, we figured out how to do
it - mostly from a customer abusing the system - and shut them down at the
time. The problem was that it wasn't complicated enough that it would take
long for others to figure out.

The problem I noted at the time is that since we only charged for minutes
_during_ the call, the first call - which was dialed and immediately dropped -
would never get a charge, only the second would.

~~~
opendomain
I am a big fan of twillio, but I suspect that they or companies like it are
contributing to the problem.

I would like everyone that uses a telephone API to be required to register a
bond. If they are found abusing the system, they will lose the bond and be
banned from using ANY companies telephone system.

That telephony companies do not take the opportunity fix tbe actual problem
makes me think a court may be able to find they are complicit.

~~~
caseysoftware
One of the most important/valuable things about Twilio is that people can get
started easily with little friction. If you add a bond (aka insurance) into
the process, you've added a ton of friction that will only solve a problem
relevant in a _tiny_ percentage of situations.

~~~
bambax
Yes, and also, as toast0 says, it's likely to be impossible to have all those
providers agree on such a system.

But phone operators should do something, like block voicemails left by a
robot, either by detecting them automatically, or blacklisting numbers, or,
why not, offer the option of a captcha before leaving a message:

 _in order to leave a message to this person, please enter the result of the
following operation: how much is 3 times 4_...

Maybe there's an opportunity for a startup here. It could work before the fact
with a captcha as above, or after the fact: it would listen to your messages
and spam-rate them.

~~~
caseysoftware
[https://www.nomorobo.com/](https://www.nomorobo.com/) does the rating based
on phone number, effectively an RBL

------
crooked-v
> The Republican National Committee, which is in favor of ringless voice mail,
> goes as far as to argue that prohibiting direct-to-voice-mail messages may
> be a violation of free speech.

Absurd. The right to free speech does not include forcing others to listen to
you.

~~~
bobcallme
They are not forcing you to listen to anything. You can a) delete the message
or b) change voicemail systems so this does not work. These problems can be
mitigated from a technical perspective.

~~~
derimagia
.. and why does that allow them to spam you? Just because you can avoid it by
changing numbers? You could make that same argument for a restraining order --
"Oh you can just move, so why would we legally protect you?". Absurd.

~~~
anon182429
I think the problems with receiving a voicemail message and requiring a
serious legal protection because you could be murdered or physically harmed by
a specific person and not even close to the same order of magnitude.

~~~
derimagia
Although I see where you are coming from, restraining orders aren't just for
stalking/threats/abuse. It'a also for harassment, which I would definitely say
telemarketers do.

------
sillysaurus3
Anyone else in a situation where you're receiving robocalls ten times a day?
Hard to believe, but I can show screenshots as proof.

I just counted. It's four times per day, like clockwork. Then there are
various other robocalls that come in every couple days. So sometimes it's 4
per day, sometimes it's up to 7.

It's mildly annoying, but is there any other option than to just ignore it or
keep blocking the endless new numbers that pop up?

~~~
kaybe
Is getting a new number a bad option for you?

~~~
leejoramo
I have had several friends and colleagues get new numbers and immediately be
hounded by collection agencies looking for the old owner of the number. Some
of these collection agencies also stared sending postal mail to their homes
based on the linking this new number with their addresses.

~~~
lcarlson
It's against the law for collection agencies to call you if you tell them not
to.

~~~
areyousure
Oh! If it's _against the law_ , surely that will stop annoying phone calls!
How did we not think of that easy solution to the problem!?

~~~
lcarlson
You can actually sue them if they do call you after you tell them not to for
$1200 per violation. Is also illegal for them to call mobile phones. This
technology actually cropped up because collection agencies are getting
backlash from using robo dialers. I'd argue collection agencies are much more
regulated than telemarketers. Google the FDCPA law.

------
jimhefferon
> Regulators are considering whether to ban these messages. They have been
> hearing from ringless voice mail providers and pro-business groups, which
> argue that these messages should not qualify as calls and, therefore, should
> be exempt from consumer protection laws that ban similar types of telephone
> marketing.

What's the point of a death penalty if not for this?

------
bifel
The method (at least here in my country) is really simple (and not really a
secret): The voicemail can be reached from a special number. This number is
easy to derive from the actual phone number (usually inserting one or two
digits, depending on the provider). When the "owner" calls the mailbox, he
gets the "admin" functionality. Anyone else calling it can only add messages.
The rest is just simple call forwarding. So all that is needed is finding out
the number of the mail box.

~~~
ilanco
Not sure if it still works, but in Israel it is as simple as prepending the
voice mail prefix to the phone number. Some voice mail boxes can receive
faxes, so there is some legitimate use for it.

------
gech
>They have been hearing from ringless voice mail providers and pro-business
groups, which argue that these messages should not qualify as calls and,
therefore, should be exempt from consumer protection laws that ban similar
types of telephone marketing.

There's no limit to how low pro-business thinking can go.

~~~
rhizome
There is no "low" in business thinking. Capital is amoral.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
True - for all businesses in which there is only capital involved and no
people [or animals, or environmental concerns, or ...]. Capital may be amoral,
but the people using it certainly are not.

~~~
rhizome
People can be amoral. The word wasn't coined only to apply to things that
aren't people.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Seems I'm wrong. I was working on amoral as meaning without morality rather
than without concern for morality, so excuse my ignorance. Under my (wrong)
definition I was expressing that people's actions always have moral
consequences as that appeared to me the contrary of what the parent was
suggesting.

Thanks for calling it out

The sibling comment by s73ver however remains valid I feel, capital is
unconcerned with morality but people are concerned with it in general (not
being so is considered a mental illness).

~~~
rhizome
_(not being so is considered a mental illness)_

It absolutely is not. Here's just one example, and note that the defendants
did not plead insanity:

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

I can find many, many more examples of both overt and subtle rejections of
moralities you appear to think is a requirement for a functional life in
society, but even without that we can find capitalist amorality all day every
day in the form of fraud.

------
gumby
A nail in the coffin for voice mail, which I hardly check at all anyway.
Automatic transcription has made thee easier to ignore, but if the volume goes
up I'll just disable voice mail completely.

I'm not sure anybody actually listens to their messages any more and so I
rarely leave them. After all, if it's important, why would you call at all?

~~~
dredmorbius
I see death of conventional telephony.

POTS is dow to <10% in many areas. Mobile is abysmal.

VOIP, voice chat, highly constrained accept policies.

------
bjacobel
If you'd like to submit a comment on this to the FCC, the link is here:

[https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/filings](https://www.fcc.gov/ecfs/filings)

The proceeding code is 02-278.

------
jumpkickhit
I should be able to charge people to leave a voice mail.

Not much, say 25 cents or around there. If it's important that's a negligible
cost.

------
dragonwriter
There may be (depending on the mechanism used to acheive this) a good policy
argument to be made that these shouldn't be governed by laws governing phone
calls, but they are exactly the same arguments that would lead to the
conclusion that they should be governed by laws concerning unsolicited
commercial email.

------
dboreham
Hmm. I worked on voice mail systems in the 90s (by then they were already old
and encrusted with feature bloat). This is actually how they work: like email
or any other message delivery system. Messages are sent and delivered into
mailboxes. The typical "ring-no-answer -> automated attendant" workflow that
everyone sees as the face of VM is in fact an application layered on to of the
base messaging service. If you know how (and it hasn't been administratively
disabled) you can log in, compose a message and give it a recipient list just
like email. Yoh can even schedule delayed delivery, ask for read receipt and
on and on.

------
praptak
I never got the appeal of having voice mail in the first place. Send me a
text, call again or wait for me to call back.

~~~
bsamuels
i dont answer phone calls from numbers i dont recognize because 90% of the
calls i receive are telemarketing

if they dont leave a voicemail i assume it's not important enough for a phone
call

------
zzzeek
My phone already alerts me to "spam" phone numbers for incoming calls, this
will become just another spam control issue based on audio analysis /
transcription of the message content. Regulations would be awesome but
considering how poorly enforced even simple things like "do not call" are,
well established spam control techniques probably where this will end up.

~~~
spc476
You might very well be using the software my company produced. I'm not sure
how the database is constructed, but there is a query we make that returns the
type of call, it's reputation (on a -4 to +4 scale---low score is bad), the
category, the carrier network and line type, which we pass on to the phone. I
suspect it might be partially created from complaints about calling numbers,
or even carrier (one recent spammer call I received came from the "Onvoy"
carrier, whoever they are).

------
cmurf
I get maybe a dozen calls per week that become 2 second hangup voicemails.
It's been going on for a few years. Mark the number spam in Google Voice, but
I still get a voice mail notification on my phone for those numbers unless
they're also blocked. But it's a different number every time, endless.

------
Overtonwindow
But HOW does it work? It's not clear by the article precisely how this is
done. Possibly a triple call system. Three calls to that same number at once,
each a millisecond after the other, and when the third hits the voicemail the
other two disconnect immediately.

~~~
edoceo
You really only need a double call. It's quite easy.

I wrote this ages ago [http://edoceo.com/exemplar/call-to-
voicemail](http://edoceo.com/exemplar/call-to-voicemail)

Oddly, my number gets blown up by these things.

~~~
rgj
How about call waiting?

~~~
Overtonwindow
That's why I was thinking triple call. Only double call would cause call
waiting.

------
tjoff
People still use voice mail? I don't believe I've encountered one in at least
a decade...

~~~
elchief
I changed my message to say please don't leave me voicemail but they did
anyways. So I got rid of it and I like not having it

~~~
semi-extrinsic
You can always set your voicemail number to something funny. I used to set it
to a French ski resort automated weather report telephone - that's annoying
and an expensive international call to boot, so people quickly stop trying
(not that you'd notice if they didn't).

~~~
bluesign
AFAIK It is charged to you (to whom forwarding) not to the caller

------
kop316
Seeing this and some of the other people who get spam calls (I get them too
from time to time), I am wondering if they allow this legally, why not do
something to make the effort of it not worth it?

[https://www.reddit.com/r/itslenny/](https://www.reddit.com/r/itslenny/)

I am reminded of this, where the goal is to waste to telemarketers time as
much as possible, and my thought is enough people used it, it would make spam
calling not worth it.

I would gladly pay for a program in which I could load that up on my phone and
have it distract/annoy them back.

Thoughts?

~~~
15155
[http://www.jollyrogertelco.com/](http://www.jollyrogertelco.com/)

No affiliation.

------
coding123
Marriots is a company that should probably be bombed into oblivion. I signed
up for a free night at a hotel. Ever since, I have probably received 2000
calls over the years from them. I think it's not just them but affiliates and
other scammy/scummy businesses. If anyone is out there, please please do not
ever pay Marriots a single penny. They need to go under.

~~~
tlb
When a particular company calls you, just ask to be put on their "do not call"
list. Real organizations always seem to honor that list, and there are large
fines from the FCC if they don't. (The robocallers described in the article
are a different beast, who spoof numbers and pop up under a new identity as
soon as they are shut down.)

~~~
coding123
One of the times I answered I told him to put me on the do-not-call list and
the live person said: "FUCK YOUUUUUU" and hung up. My calls increased
considerably after that day. Yes I have considered suing many times, but
chicken out realizing how much work would be involved. Most of the calls don't
ring anymore as I migrated to Google Voice and just turned on Do Not Disturb
for everyone. I can read that it's telemarketing spam or someone that's real.

Regarding spoofing - 100% are spoofed now. In the last 6 months all of the
spam calls I have in my GVoice inbox match the same first 6 digits of my phone
number. The last 4 digits are random numbers.

~~~
Sunset
You could always show up to their office IRL and start some shit.

------
MichaelBurge
My first impression is that having the government regulate them is
unnecessary, since you can block them on your phone(and phone providers can
sell phones that block them by default). All you need is one company to sell a
"telemarketer-resistant" phone with an automatically-synced blocklist and some
other settings enabled by default.

~~~
Macha
If they're using the approach described elsewhere in the thread, sounds like
you can't.

------
dewiz
I disabled voicemail a long time ago, never going back. I educated my contacts
to retry or send a text, worked well so far.

~~~
su3aseuo9
So what happens when, for example, you're trying to get a home loan to buy a
new house, and the loan officer is an older person who doesn't use texts?
(This is something real that recently happened to me, and for which a phone
and voicemail were indispensable.)

I find that while I can do what you suggest for friends and family, there are
just enough situations where I can't do that, that I need to still have
voicemail. Doctors offices that robocall to remind you of an appointment are
another one. The occasional lawyer, or other professional who have a
particular way of doing things. Getting rid of phone and/or voicemail just
isn't a realistic option for a lot of people.

~~~
dewiz
I disagree, people have used phones without voicemail for decades, they know
they can retry. And when I miss a call from an unknown number I can easily
look it up if I'm expecting important calls. There are also apps that helps
with that, showing who called you even when it's a new number. About robocalls
from doctors and pharmacies etc I also manage those comms via email, I take
care of telling doctors and pharmacies to give me an electronic prompt, most
have a computerized system that does that anyway. There might be people who
need voicemail, but I don't buy that it's so common, it's more about people
being used to it and not knowing they can turn it off.

------
RandomInteger4
In a way, this is a huge relief. I never listen to voice mails, so not having
to be bothered by my phone ringing for something unimportant saves me a bit of
time and anxiety.

Now I just have to worry about people I know, phone interviews, and debt
collectors (who seem to be harassing me less often via phone these days).

~~~
r00fus
How about just disabling VM?

~~~
RandomInteger4
Then I would get the call no? VM isn't the problem. The problem is the
ringing.

------
matt_wulfeck
In early 2000s this used to be a feature of my phone and I actually liked it.
It allowed me to call someone and leave some information quick and easily.
Text messages have largely replaced the need for that now. So much so that
I've often pondered disabling my voicemail altogether.

------
mirimir
OK, so if the spammer wants you to call back, they must leave a number. So
say, if someone offered suitable SaaS, you could put that number on a list to
be voicemail spammed. At one minute interval, from random numbers.

------
sgustard
The weird thing is I get plenty of telemarketing calls now, but they almost
never leave voicemail. I had assumed their whole business model was to get a
live victim on the phone, not in leaving spam behind.

------
s73ver
This is pure evil, and I hope those doing it end up living under a bridge.

------
amingilani
How does this even work? How can you not ring the phone and have a voicemail?

~~~
delinka
Permission from the carrier to dump an audio file directly into your voicemail
box.

~~~
dragonwriter
If that's the mechanism and this takes off, there'll be a strong incentive for
one carrier to offer spam-free voice mail and either steal all the customers
or cause the entire industry to fall in line.

~~~
jameshart
But the carrier who provides the service to advertisers to target messages and
directly load them into subscriber inboxes can charge their subscribers _lower
prices_ because they have another customer, so your hypothetical ethical
carrier will lose out to them. Hell, if they can open up the ad sales channel
enough they could probably give away calling for free, just like a proper
modern internet business.

Does the existence of ad-funded free search engines mean the market naturally
ought to produce spam-free search engines that steal all the customers?

------
thescribe
Perhaps a shrink-wrap style TOS in my voice mail message? By leaving a message
you agree to pay a fee per ringless message?

~~~
su3aseuo9
I have heard that this works legally, but that you have to be willing to take
them to small claims court, and good luck getting them to actually pay when
you win a judgement against them. (You'll have to hire someone else to
actually collect the money from them, and that likely makes it not worth your
time and/or money.)

------
mee_too
I was planning to switch to data-only SIM anyway, don't need no phone number
or voice mail.

~~~
thrill
I assume one can make either-direction VOIP calls (i.e. Google Voice) via a
data-only SIM? I wonder if I could get that via Verizon.

------
dmnd
As if voicemail wasn't already in danger of being routinely disabled.

