
FCC bans spoofed text messages and international robocalls - dgudkov
https://www.engadget.com/2019/08/02/fcc-bans-spoofed-text-messages-international-robocalls/
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SOLAR_FIELDS
Amusing that spoofing domestic calls is already illegal. Clearly there is no
enforcement. Looking at my call history over the past week I have a grand
total of 14 robocalls from a number that shares the first six digits of my
phone (area code plus first three digits). I think there is a general
consensus that these calls are obviously spoofed. I’m not even counting the
numerous other 800 number (or non-800) calls that I have that don’t fit the
obvious spoofing criteria I have laid out there. I have zero international
spoofed calls. Why even bother with the international problem when the
domestic law, clearly being violated, isn’t even enforced?

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cordite
Is the interpretation that an international number can’t be spoofed now, or
that the source being international AND spoofing (which may include domestic
numbers) is considered illegal?

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SOLAR_FIELDS
I believe it is the latter. I have a USA number and when I travel abroad I get
spoofed calls originating from USA numbers. The opposite pretty much never
happens though. Domestically I almost never receive calls spoofed from an
international number (outside of USA) calling to my number (Inside USA).

That doesn’t necessarily tackle the scenario you’re calling out (someone
outside USA acts like they are inside USA when spoofing a call). That might be
the loophole they are actually trying to close (this simply gives them a way
to prosecute bad actors who are spoofing USA domestic calls but live outside
the USA). Which if it is, great.

Otherwise if they mean international inbound calls it doesn’t really affect
consumers since if it is referring to calls originating from outside USA,
those basically never happen in practice anyway and it would make this kind of
enforcement pretty much useless.

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musicale
Recently some robocalls have been showing up as foreign numbers rather than
from my own area code and prefix. Maybe that is some kind of progress... or
maybe the robocaller's call spoofing wasn't configured properly. ;-/

It is surprising that carriers accept spoofed local numbers from robocallers.

I guess it's like ISPs who happily accept packets originating in their
networks with source IP addresses from the other side of the world.

