
Lobbyists Win Right to Bombard Student Borrowers with Robocalls - boh
https://theintercept.com/2015/10/28/boehnerland-lobbyists-win-right-to-bombard-student-borrowers-with-robocalls/
======
tlb
Starting a few months ago, I'm getting a few robocalls a week from "your local
google specialist" and such scams. My number is listed in donotcall.gov. It
makes me want to not answer unrecognized numbers on my phone.

It's now the case that a database of every phone number (10 billion entries,
highly compressible) could be mirrored to every phone, with a reputation score
for each number. Or looked up in real time. The phone company won't do it --
it'll have to be independent, like an ad blocker. I'd buy a subscription to
that database.

~~~
patio11
Try nomorobo. They get you to set up simultaneous-ring with one of their
numbers. For each incoming call, if it fails their reputation scoring, their
system simply "picks up" immediately and plays a pre-recorded message. Your
main number then doesn't receive the call (timing issues notwithstanding).

They have an interesting way of building the reputation database: in addition
to receiving customer reports, they buy Twilio's "dirtiest" phone numbers, the
ones getting so spammed they're unusable by other businesses. If you call ~3
dirty numbers, welcome to the dynamic block list.

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
Doesn't work with the callers who spoof your own phone number.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
Here in the UK, calling your own number seems to be used exclusively for
configuration stuff (voicemail etc.).

Is there any normal use for it in the states? If not, surely you should just
blacklist your own number?

(I'm aware that any time you say "you should just ..." it's never that simple)

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c0ur7n3y
You can always setup an Asterix box and put Lenny on the case:

[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLduL71_GKzHHk4hLga0nO...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLduL71_GKzHHk4hLga0nOGWrXlhl-
i_3g)

"Lenny" is a hilarious set of recorded messages designed to waste
telemarketers' time."

On a personal note, I have to say that there is something so satisfying about
a robot answering these calls. A caller normally has the advantage that you
can't see them, have no idea who they are, and they can do it at scale. Lenny
turns those very advantages against them.

~~~
anon4
How do you tell between telemarketers and legit cold calls? Maybe something
like "if they say the word offer within the first minute, it's a telemarketer,
keep them occupied"? Also, it's a bit dishonest to outright have the robot
pretend to be the person, maybe they should say "Hello, I am Lenny, the phone
secretary of so-and-so"? And once you pass the equivalent of a verbal CAPTCHA,
you are allowed through?

~~~
ghaff
There's a difference? As far as I'm concerned, there is no such thing as a
legit cold call to my home number.

~~~
anon4
I only have one number, so people from work call me from time to time. Though
I largely agree - in that case I just have their numbers in my address book
copied from the company register, even though they've never called me.

~~~
ghaff
Ah. "Cold call" as in "not in your contacts list." Cold call usually refers to
a sales call to someone who you don't have a prior relationship with (i.e.
isn't current customer or hasn't requested information).

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astockwell
Anymore, answering the phone simply because it is ringing is an anachronism.
Ditto to having a land-line (especially without caller ID!). These companies
pushed so hard that they've pushed all the sensible folks out of their reach
permanently. And kudos to the new wave of phone OSs that allow for blocking
any number from your phone itself. We saw that the government wasn't going to
do it, carriers certainly didn't do it, so companies and individuals did it.

~~~
CaptSpify
It's almost like the best course of action for any of these communication
systems is educating the user, and giving them the tools to do it themselves!
Who would have thought?!

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Spearchucker
I bought my phone for my convenience, not anyone else's. It has a whitelist,
and if a number isn't on it, it goes to voicemail. Which has a message
instructing callers to send me an email, as I don't check my voicemail. I've
been running this arrangement for some years now, and it works beautifully.

~~~
hwstar
Bill collectors have been known to spoof caller ID with relatives' phone
numbers. Yes, I know this is illegal, but it is still done.

The best approach is audio captcha where you have to enter a random 3 digit
code to get the phone to ring. This throws off most call centers because, the
part which makes the phone ring is automated. Once the line is answered, an
agent is connected to the line.

If the collection agency does not use automated dialing, then DTMF passwords
may be necessary. This is a pain for friends and family, but it can be a very
effective filter.

~~~
doodpants
A CAPTCHA is never the best approach to anything.

~~~
Natanael_L
Depends on how much you like taking calls. Having CAPTCHA in incoming calls
would be very appreciated by a large number of introverts.

~~~
hwstar
Actually, it's very handy during voting season.

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mutagen
Spam and the like are going to ruin telecommunications like they've ruined
email. It will be a slower process while they get bolder about skirting rules
but they're going to get there.

Wait until these spammers and debt collectors get your social graph, your
contact lists and the like, from failed mobile startups. You're going to start
getting fake caller ID from friends and relatives.

The endgame is a balkanization of incompatible proprietary telecommunication
clients all running you and your devices through a reverse Turing test to
confirm legitimate communications. Oh, you'll still be able to get calls if
you like, they'll all go to voicemail so your own neural networks can pick out
the ones worthwhile to listen to.

~~~
ghaff
I'm actually not all that concerned. Telemarketing has been going on for a
very long time. That's what drove the do-not-call registry and related laws in
the first place. I'm not saying what still exists (whether because of
deliberate loopholes in the laws or simply breaking them) isn't annoying but
it doesn't really seem to be getting worse either from personal experience or
from the experience of others I speak with.

I get very few junk calls on my cell--though why there isn't a "report junk
call" button I don't know. Home gets a steady enough stream to be annoying (2
or 3 a day) but they're easy enough to ignore if I don't recognize the caller
ID.

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Natsu
The new number on my cell used to belong to someone with a debt. No matter how
often I explain that the person they want is not and never will be available
at this number again, they keep calling as they sell the debt and the info to
new people.

So they continually robocall my cell phone chasing someone who isn't and never
will be at this number. I do not have and never have had any unpaid debts to
begin with.

I had to install a call blocking app and I just keep listing new numbers each
time. It doesn't buy very much peace, but it blocks enough calls to be
worthwhile.

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arca_vorago
Lobbyist and K-Street are at the core of the problem in the Beltway. I've
spent a long time trying to figure out the root issues there, and I think
short term limits are the best way to prevent this, because here how it
happens.

You get elected on hopes and dreams, and propose a bill, but you are a
freshman. The senior guy you ask to help you sponsor the bill which is only 10
pages long then says he will support you if you add an amendment that says X,
even that amendment has nothing to do with the main bill, and he has been
donated money or promised campaign support by $KSTREETGROUP. If you say no,
you get derailed, the bill never leaves committee, and you have made an enemy.
You agree, and then the floodgates are open for 10 other sitting house members
to throw in their amendments too. Before you know it, your bill is 250 pages
and they removed all your original text and it's no longer your bill. If you
rock the boat, you make enemies and forever get shoved aside. Agree and
support the bill _you introduced_ , that is actually now bad legislation, and
all those people say they will help you next time.

In this case, it's more of the, _this bill has to pass, so we can add all
kinds of little tidbits and the public won 't know about them in time to stop
it!_. Then you might have a guy or two who actually put that tidbit in vote no
just so he has some plausible deniability to his constituents who don't know
any better because reports on the hill suck these days.

We need to get rid of excessive riders, last minute riders on big bills,
extend time for public review, and give power back to congress/senate to take
stances without being pushed over politically. The thing is that the lobbyist
will mostly just promise to get the guy fired if they push back too much, or
they will then donate to another guy who's been in for 18 years and get him to
put the pressure on. If we put short term limits (and I don't mean 12 years, I
mean 6 year limits) then you can get people who will do stuff and not care
about getting booted out, because they never had the intention to turn it into
a lifetime job in the first place.

Also, we need to stop the revolving door between the hill and k-street.
Staffers should not be allowed to turn around and go work for them, as Jack
Abramoff put it, once he promised a staffer a job, he found out that they
would do more for him than he even asked them to do!

We have a broken system, and until we address these fundamental problems, all
the other issues people are passionate about will never get fixed properly.
Fix the system first, then work on the more mainstream issues.

Vote arca_vorago for congress.

~~~
digler999
One solution, (not that it would ever happen) , is to anonymize the bills. In
order to submit a bill, you have to be a house member, but once you submit it
your name is stripped off. everyone reviews it and either adds it to a larger
bill or discards it. larger bills eventually make it up to group vote.

another deterrent would be a rule that every meeting between congressmen and
lobbyist has to be recorded. So CSPAN can air what actually goes in at the
negotiating table between these "lobbyists".

finally, if there were some kind of "citizens' lobby" that could influence
these assholes the same way corporations do (even though this is how it was
supposed to work all along). But the "citizens" are so divided on partisan and
emotional issues they'd never agree to form a coalition and lobby on par with
industry.

~~~
Kalium
These "citizens' lobby" you pre-suppose exists. Many of them, actually. They
tend to specialize. They have names like "The Sierra Club" and "The Nature
Conservancy".

You know. Lobbyists.

------
vonklaus
i have been getting crushed by these. i freely admit that the debt is my
responsibility ~6k credit cards. but every day 5 calls. fake numbers from my
area code (town over) my state doesnt have a chase bank in it and prob no
capital one either.

2 months late. call back after i have the money and say i will pay current in
a week. all of the collection department (to be clear these are still part of
the bank, represented themselves as banking employees, and get routed via a
bank number) they offered me $90 bucks off. call back to make direct payment
in line with the verbal agreement.

them: sir i have no call notes

me: ok, let me look. i actually do think i said i would phone you back and pay
i have that in my call notes.

Them: yes, it says you owe us $100 today.

me : (whered those notes come from mate) oh, ok so you were able to find thr
notes. do you have the paymeny arrangements i made with lisa?

Them : no.

me: she offered me an arrangement.

them: oh i do see that yes $30 dollars

me: (i have detailed call notes with her and everones employee number i spoke
with extrapolating the rapidly illegitimate deal they can't put in writiing
because it is a service and convenience)

sure, well she offered me $90 and i will pay right now, even though i said it
wpuld be a week, if you give me the deal she offered which might be in the
notes if you look closer (you lieing dickhead)

them: no sir, i can give you $30.

me: let me think about it and consult my notes, i don't feel confortable
paying today.

them: ok

\---- 2 minutes elapse

robo call local number from town over of 7k people. on line don't answer.

\-- robocall from same number. demanding payment. have similar accent to
callcenter people, act like they arent affiliated.

look, my fault for not paying and sure i broke the agreement, but fuck this. i
dont have to pay i will just never get a credit card this decade. but im
trying even on shitty financial terms now to pay you because it is an
obligation. but calling me 5x times from fake numbers is fucked up on a 2
missed payments over 2+ years of good standing. couldnt imagine what actual
collections would do.

this story was about fictional bank p.j morgones.

also i want to note capital one was cool about it and as professional (or
more) than me as i dis reneg on my card services agreement and they called
from their real number

~~~
jbooth
That sounds like it's not the bank, but some shady player that the bank sold
your debt to for .01 on the dollar. If you want to settle the debt, do some
research on these players so you don't just throw the money away without
getting any credit for it on your credit report.

~~~
vonklaus
correct. I also believed I had been sold to a "debt collector". I do not know
much about this, and it may be true but I spoke with the bank directly and
they said that was not the case and the main switchboard provided the number
to the collections office.

I confirmed the outgoing wire to chase so it is possible that the debt has
been sold but they are still representing it? I did a bit of research but
someone on reddit suggested a site that provides credit reports and info about
the debt and it doesn't appear to be resold but who knows what "resold" means.

Maybe they do it like subprime mortgages and bundle them up or something. If
anyone sees this, my advice is find the main phone number of your bank and ask
to speak to customer service/ client services so you know you are dealing with
them.

take as many notes as possible and record the call if you want. They will
specify every phone transfer and often you are being recorded and IANAL but if
a disclosure like this has been said, you may be able to record them, if
unsure announce you are on the call.

pay directly to the creditor and get as much info as possible.

don't get in massive amounts of debt as it sucks.

------
stoolpigeon
I worked in the collections industry for a while. It was my first programming
job.

I don't understand debtors that don't want to get calls letting them know what
is happening. I get it in the sense that they didn't pay their bills and
they've chosen denial as their plan for dealing with it but I don't get why
anyone else would want to validate that kind of behavior.

But if that is the route they want to go the FCDPA clearly states that they
can force the debt collector to cease communication for the most part and the
avenues that remain open are via written mail.

I understand that sometimes an old number or something might be called in
error but that has be a pretty rare thing and something easy to deal with on
the receiving end.

I think the best way to avoid robocalls from debt collectors is to not let
your debt go into collections.

~~~
hga
Echoing others, you may not have any choice in this.

Back in 2007 Certegy had a terrible data breach, an employee, sysadmin or
dbadmin, sold info on 3 million people
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Certegy#Consumer_information_c...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Certegy#Consumer_information_compromised)).

Not all that long after that, pretty clearly based on information gained from
Certegy or some other compromise of my most basic checking account information
---but bizarrely, not necessarily my name? Something was very wrong in the set
of info---a debt collector claimed I'd charged hundreds of dollars to on-line
porn sites to my checking account.

Which of course is particularly bizarre, because if it was real, why hadn't
they just debited my account in the first place?

So, no debt, but it went into collections, and they didn't give up for more
than a year. Can't remember why they gave up, other than that they pretty
clearly knew the case was weak, assuming the whole thing wasn't a scam to
begin with.

~~~
dragonwriter
If your information was compromised, its at least possible that whoever was
_not_ a debt collector, but posing as one supposedly collecting a debt
associated with embarrassing info (that people wouldn't want to be associated
with if there was an escalation to a lawsuit) so that they could extort money
from you.

------
andreasklinger
Next up: Anti Call Spam software for Mobile devices becoming a big thing.
Built in by default in iOS12.

History repeating…

------
downandout
I guess I don't understand the point of this. It appears that these
legislators don't understand that permanent blocking of calls and texts from
an annoying number are just a tap away in both Android and iOS. They'll be
spending millions to harass no one.

------
mindo
I don't really understand that lobbying thing, who is paying who to officially
make life worse for citizens and how this is justified? PS: I'm not american.

~~~
hwstar
Instead of a government for the People, the People, and of the People, it's
actually a government for the Opulent Minority, by the Opulent Minority and of
the Opulent Minority.

James Madison stated: "Landholders ought to have a share in the government, to
support these invaluable interests, and to balance and check the other. They
ought to be so constituted as to protect the minority of the opulent against
the majority. The senate, therefore, ought to be this body; and to answer
these purposes, they ought to have permanency and stability."

~~~
hwstar
You know what, you guys who did this are better than this. If you are going to
downvote, then explain why.

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jreed91
How about this? I'll answer your calls, if you decrease my loan payment each
time.

------
vaadu
The Washington Cartel strikes again.

