
U.S. Robocall Data - HillaryBriss
https://robocallindex.com
======
politician
I receive 3-5 robocalls per day, and answer none of them, and only pick up if
the caller is in my contact list. Robocalls are ruining my trust in the phone
system. Both email and the telephone networks are saturated with spam.

It would be nice to be able to microcharge callers like in one of those old
pay-per-email schemes, to reduce some of this noise.

From ads, to emails, to phone calls, these mass unsolicited efforts to compel
our attention will ultimately result in the "cord-cutting" we've seen in the
TV space.

~~~
ravenstine
I have a theory that phone companies are letting these crimes happen because
they want to tank the old phone system so they can sell more data, or
something along those lines.

~~~
flyinghamster
They're cutting their own throat, then. Even though my Asterisk system blocks
(and records) multiple robocalls daily, I finally got off my butt and ditched
my AT&T landline for good. I should have done that a decade ago. Bonus: I'm
paying less for VoIP service than what AT&T charged just for Caller ID. My
monthly home phone bill has gone from about $45 to under $10.

I also got my parents to ditch their landline as well... so that's two
customers that AT&T no longer has.

I guess it's time to yank the FXO modules off my TDM400P card and sell them to
someone who could use them. :)

~~~
drewmol
Any recommendations for hardware, software and good service provider for home
VoIP?

I've used an Obihai OBI110 in the past and it was super reliable, the only
maintenance was an ~ once yearly power-cycle. Had it setup with Google Voice
(was free* for US calls) and Anveo for e911 (~$10/Year). Porting the existing
landline # to Google Voice required porting to mobile first, as GV would only
accept ports from mobile #'s. Ordering a Ting SIM card [SIM and port were
free, line was $6/mo, only needed one month] and then to Google Voice [$20
fee] accomplished this for $26 total. With recent updates to Google Voice
service combined with the OBI110 being past EOL, I need a new setup. It would
be nice to ditch GV for a paid provider.

*Google records your calls, monetizes the data with ad targeting, selling your voice profile, future blackmail, etc.

~~~
flyinghamster
For my folks, I got them an OBI300, and so far so good. My own setup is an old
Atom-based Mini-ITX board and a Digium TDM400P card, with Asterisk handling
the calls. We went with Callcentric for service, and we've been happy with it.

~~~
drewmol
Awesome, thanks for the reply. I've tinkered with roll my own Asterisk setup a
few times over the years but I just ordered an OBI300 since I always loved
having a portable, canned _landline-in-a-box_ device for traveling, etc. Given
the ever increasing volume of spam/scam calls, a couple hundred $ or less can
probably get me through to telephone obsolescence!

------
flexie
Robocalls used for unsolicited marketing, which is the bulk of it, is illegal
throughout the European Union and has been so for around 15 years.

The ban follows form article 13 of the directive on privacy and electronic
communications: [https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-
content/en/ALL/?uri=CELEX:32...](https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-
content/en/ALL/?uri=CELEX:32002L0058)

The ban is not 100 percent effective - I receive a robocall maybe once every
year - but it's pretty efficient. From the numbers I read here, it's some 99.9
percent effective. I have lived in 3 different EU countries and it wasn't a
big issue in any of them.

Different countries in the EU have implemented the ban differently. But
generally, businesses that use robocalls are fined on a per call basis. So it
is an issue that can be dealt with by regulation. Companies breaking the rules
are fined and the risk of being reported is high so it's not a viable business
model.

I still receive spam emails, which is the same and is also illegal, but - and
I don't mean anything else than to state the fact - almost all spam I receive
is from outside the EU, such as America, Russia, Africa or Asia.

~~~
dweekly
I am a US resident. My cell is on the Federal Do Not Call list, which makes
unsolicited calls to my number illegal. I get about 5-10 spam calls a day.
Phone calls originate from random numbers, about a third of which share the
first six digits of my cell phone, by design.

------
Scoundreller
My favourite response was this one where they flooded the callback numbers
with robocalls 28x/second for 3 days until they killed the number.

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EzedMdx6QG4](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EzedMdx6QG4)

More details here: [https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/bj8wg4/we-
talked-...](https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/bj8wg4/we-talked-to-
the-hacker-who-flooded-alleged-irs-scammers-with-robocalls)

~~~
mulmen
Does this work for spoofed numbers? I thought if you call back you just get
the person that got spoofed, not the actual spammer.

~~~
S_A_P
You've hit the nail on the head- thats the problem- the number isn't real. I
have gotten at least half a dozen callbacks/texts asking "who dis" or "why did
you call me"? when the reality is my number ended up in the robodialer
spooferator 5000 number generator. The only way to really stop it would be for
everyone to stay on the line and waste the telemarketers/scammers time until
they realized they had no viable business. Unfortunately, that is a really
hard problem to solve.

~~~
Scoundreller
A lot of the robocallers just play a pre-recorded message asking you to call
back.

That’s when the flooding works.

A lot of the scammers are just call-centres that outsource the lead
generation. By flooding the call-back number, their campaign that they paid
for goes down the drain.

------
mullingitover
The fact that this is even a thing that people need to cobble together is a
sign of market failure in the POTS business. It's also a sign of total
abdication of duty on the part of regulators. They made a big show of busting
software pirates, but I have yet to see any robocallers getting frog marched.
This, despite the serious threat they pose to the integrity of a vital
telecommunications system.

~~~
anoncoward111
Software pirates threatened corporations. Thus, the corporations paid the
politicians handsomely to pursue them to literal ends of the Earth (Laos and
Cambodia for Gottfrid and Fredrik at Pirate Bay)

Robocallers just threaten consumers. Corporations truly could not care less,
it seems.

~~~
mattnewton
Heck, some of the biggest tech corporations run communications platforms; they
don’t care if phones become an unusable toxic wasteland, they could probably
benefit from people using their services more, as long as it doesn’t attract
regulatory attention.

I hope instead though some software companies treat this as a technical
problem and sell solutions.

------
whitexn--g28h
Why can't my provider, Telus, block spoofed caller Id. For email we have SPF
and Dmarc, I haven't had an email with spoofed from address hit my inbox in
years. Similar to the internet the phone system is connected through peering,
sources of spam should be dropped like bitcanal.

[https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/internet-
tran...](https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/internet-transit-
providers-disconnect-infamous-bgp-hijack-factory/)

~~~
mook
They can't block it because it costs them nothing; there's no incentive to get
them to build the capability. Currently it works like old school (physical,
postal) mail -- the sender writes something on the envelope that says who they
are.

If every robocall received gets you five cents off your phone bill, it'll be
solved within a year.

------
DoofusOfDeath
I've contemplated an Asterisk-like system that intercepts all incoming calls,
and uses very long extensions (e.g., 7 or more digits.)

Every time I needed to give somebody my phone number, I would select an unused
extension, add it to a white-list, and tell the recipient they could reach me
at that particular extension.

Any incoming call that failed to enter a white-listed extension would be
routed to a voice response menu that a real human could easily navigate, but a
robocaller could not.

So far I haven't seen anything like this.

~~~
rdtsc
How about a system that picks up and plays this message "if you're a human
press 7 (or other digit)". Then wait a few seconds then hang up. If they press
the right digit, the phone call gets patched through otherwise it hangs up.

------
grownseed
In Canada, also get a few of those every day, even though I barely ever give
my number out. I noticed that some of those numbers are within the same area
code as mine, but not the area I live in. I attempted to call some of these
back on occasion, and was surprised to have an actual person on the other end
of the line, absolutely clueless as to why I was calling them. I'm not sure
whether hijacking a caller ID could allow that, or if some those phones have
been compromised and become part of one of the great botnet...

Meanwhile, I'm still dealing with large organizations (BestBuy, Fido/Rogers,
TD, etc.) still sending promotional offers through all possible media, despite
Canada's Anti-Spam Legislation being in full effect since 2017 and me having
never explicitly consented to that garbage in the first place.

Maybe we ought to bring the hammer down on all spammers, "legitimate" or
not...

~~~
Scoundreller
Spoofing Caller-ID is easy. So they use familiar looking numbers to appear
local to get you to answer.

They seemingly call numbers at random (at least, there's zero reason to call
me in Chinese). The Chinese language scammers once hit my employer and made it
hard to call them for a few hours because the scammers were dialing sequential
numbers, and un-assigned numbers were sent to switchboard...

Though sometimes the calls seem to be targetted. Some immigrants have gotten
calls from "Immigration Canada", while non-immigrants I've spoken to have not.
So maybe there was a leak/theft that hasn't been detected.

~~~
mullingitover
The ease of spoofing caller ID will be the downfall of POTS. Imagine what the
web would be like if it didn't have HTTPS, that's where we're at with the
telephone system. It's not just broken, it's actively hazardous.

~~~
throwaway2048
Except its worse because random websites anywhere in the world can't connect
to you claiming to be another site.

------
dschuler
In Europe, you pay to call a cell phone, but receiving a call is free (for
pre-paid voice anyway). Problem solved - except that in the US we like to
charge both sides for having a phone call, so we end up here.

On the other hand, legit companies often call as a private/unknown number, and
I never pick up. Don't Apple, insurance companies, etc., realize that no one's
picking up their phones anymore?

Forget land lines, I'm considering just not having a POTS phone number at all
anymore. Just sell me data and I'll take it from there, thanks.

~~~
neom
Spam callers spoof residential numbers so they're not blocked by rules and
filters at the telcos. Apple has called me twice once it popped up Apple
Williamsburg because I had their number in my phone, and the other time was a
800 number based on a scheduled call. What legitimate companies call from
private/unknown numbers? Even HSBC my bank calls me for fraud from the exact
same 800 number that I call them for fraud.

~~~
apexalpha
>What legitimate companies call from private/unknown numbers?

All of the European ones. The number they call out from isn't their helpdesk
so they block it to stop people calling back.

------
2bitencryption
In some better, brighter universe, I like to think that Tom Wheeler is laying
the smackdown on those scamming assholes (and hopefully doing something to
limit the non-scam-but-still-annoying calls as well).

------
JBlue42
I think I've said this before here but this sucks for individuals (I get
these) but this is also dangerous for certain sectors as well. I work at a
hospital and we will have consecutive robocalls tie up all the ER lines,
ringing at the same time, for anywhere from 5-15 minute periods. I don't work
on the telecom side of things but they say all they can do is report it to the
FBI. This has been going on since I've worked there (6 months or so) and
occurs at least once a month across the entire hospital.

~~~
Casseres
Call your local news station. I bet they might be interested in a health-scare
piece.

"We all know robo-callers are annoying, but could they also be deadly? More at
5."

That and contact your govt representatives.

~~~
JBlue42
That might bring the wrong kind of attention and doesn't really resolve the
issue. Given that the past few months has seen a lot of posts of articles
about this, hopefully attention is reaching the people that should be taking a
look at it in the government - FCC, FTC, etc.

------
knicholes
I've wanted to solve this problem. I think employing a similar method to what
the call centers are doing when you call them back (e.g. press a number of
keys) is the answer. When you receive a call from a number not on some
whitelist, the dialer has to enter some numbers to even get your phone to
ring. The problem is, I can't find any APIs to access your phone at the
operating system level to access the call before your phone already is
ringing. It'd be very easy to randomly generate some audio with a random
sequence of numbers (ala 2FA).

If anyone knows how to do this, please, please, please let me know. I'm dying
to fight back, as are some people on my team.

~~~
bobbiechen
One way without using the phone API directly is through Twilio using their
APIs for handling DTMF tones and call forwarding.

This would probably cost something like 2 cents per minute [1] plus whatever
your phone service charges (if you're just calling your existing phone) and
hosting costs for your server. I was originally tempted to say you could save
on this cost by hanging up on verified callers and calling them back directly,
except I realized that's about the same as rejecting all calls and calling
back the ones who leave meaningful voicemails / texts.

I think you could get it down to 1.2 cents per minute (+server costs) if you
also write a mobile app to handle all your calls via VoIP. Then you also need
to factor in your cost for data if not using wi-fi.

And also possibly of interest - a few days ago, Google also announced a call
screening service for the Pixel [2] which transcribes call audio in real-time
for you to read and possibly pick up and join the call. This one has the
advantage of being able to screen out actual humans working in call centers to
spam you with calls (which is less common than the robocalls in my
experience).

[1] [https://support.twilio.com/hc/en-
us/articles/223132367-How-M...](https://support.twilio.com/hc/en-
us/articles/223132367-How-Much-am-I-Charged-for-Call-Forwarding-with-Twilio-)

[2] [https://www.androidpolice.com/2018/10/09/call-screen-will-
le...](https://www.androidpolice.com/2018/10/09/call-screen-will-let-pixel-
users-see-whos-calling-want-answering/)

~~~
knicholes
Yeah, but that would require a person use a different phone number, right? Or
are you saying the customer just forwards all of their calls to Twilio
which... somehow forwards it back without the call getting forwarded?

------
jcoffland
I set my Android phone to only ring for callers in my contact list. It pisses
me off that the robocallers have won but my life is better without unwanted
phone interruptions.

~~~
dexterdog
I do this as well. I don't know why it's not a simple tile in both Android and
iOS, but you have to use a hacky app.

~~~
flyinghamster
In Android at least (I've never used iOS), there's no need for an app. You can
define custom ringtones for both individuals and groups.

Of course, you need to define groups and add contacts to those groups, but
it's all built-in.

~~~
dexterdog
But then you need to add each new contact to a group that rings. I use an app
that blocks anybody not in my contact list. That's the single feature I use
for that app. They probably mine all of my all history. Why can't this feature
be a simple checkbox in the phone or contacts app?

------
VectorLock
Its too bad that the phone companies don't offer a service where you can get
real metadata on where calls to you are originating from. I think that being
able to block by the region of call origination would solve a lot of these
problems. I know its technically infeasible especially with VOIP but a guy can
hope.

~~~
jasonjayr
Billing systems for phone lines have been sophisticated and detailed for quite
some time.

The Telco knows exactly who is originating the call, at least for the last leg
of it, and could trivially issue marks against them, till they get booted off
the network.

But alas, why would you boot the entity giving you 100x the revenue than the
target?

------
_Understated_
I'm in the UK and many years ago I was working for a US company over here.

(This happened in 2000 so my memory isn't 100% on it)

One of my managers asked me to call him at home (either in the US or Canada)
and when I dialled, I was hit with a message along the lines of "I do not
accept unsolicited calls" before I got through to him.

Now, this is the hazy bit, I am sure it asked me to press a key to continue.

Assuming I'm not talking nonsense here, how hard would it be to have a service
like that where the message asks you to type in a number it reads out in order
to continue: It would wipe out the current generation of robocalls
immediately.

Like popups and tracking blockers, it would obviously start an arms race but
it would at least be a start.

------
lanius
I've been receiving significantly more robocalls recently, and this data backs
it up. I'm not even sure why they bother. They never leave voicemails, and on
the few occasions I actually pick up, I just get silence on the other end.

------
twodave
I get a phone call about once a month from someone claiming I called them and
asking what I want. I've had only varying success in convincing them I didn't
call them, even after explaining what's going on.

------
Itsdijital
Can someone explain what are the (technical) challenges to solving this? I
feel like it shouldn't be too hard, and should go hand in hand with
modernizing the phone system.

~~~
jackhack
the ability to blacklist a range of known offenders would help quite a lot.
Further, being able to whitelist numbers would help. But it would be great if
foreign nations' governments would stop turning a blind eye to these scams.
India is a well known hotspot. The Nigerian scam is so named for a reason and
is practically a national sport. To show just how pervasive it is, there was
even a hit song about cheating Westerners ("I go chop your dollar").

Caller ID that isn't trivially spoofed wouldn't hurt, either.

Curiously, I had two "microsoft tech support" robo-voice robocalls just
tonight. The bastards.

~~~
fegul
Did you mean the Nigerian song by P-Square featuring the words "chop my
money"? Because that's not about scamming.

~~~
jackhack
No. It's called "I go chop your dollar", by Nkem Owoh

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_YjvC4ndzM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_YjvC4ndzM)

Lyrics I done suffer no be small / Upon say I get sense / Poverty no good at
all, no / Na im make I join this business / 419 no be thief, it's just a game
/ Everybody dey play em / if anybody fall mugu, / ha! my brother I go chop em
/ National Airport na me get em / National Stadium na me build em / President
na my sister brother / You be the mugu, I be the master / Oyinbo man I go chop
your dollar, / I go take your money and disappear / 419 is just a game, you
are the loser I am the winner / The refinery na me get em, / The contract, na
you I go give em / But you go pay me small money make I bring em / you be the
mugu, I be the master… / na me be the master ooo!!!! / When Oyinbo play wayo,
/ dey go say na new style / When country man do him own, / them go dey shout:
bring em, kill em, die! / That Oyinbo people greedy, I say them greedy / I
don't see them tire / That's why when they fall into my trap o! / I dey show
them fire"

Translated by Azuka Nzegwu and Adeolu Ademoyo.

I am suffering greatly / and I get this idea (or wise) / poverty is not good
at all / and I decide to join this business (scam) /

419 is not a criminal act but a game / Everybody will play / but if you are
fool / I will chop your money /

Chorus:

I own the National Airport / I built the National Stadium / The president is
my sister's brother / You are the fool and I am the master /

White man, I will eat your dollar / I will take your money and disappear / 419
is just a game, you are the loser and I am the winner /

I own the refinery / I will give you the contract / But you will have to pay
me a small fee before I bring them / You are the fool, I am the master / I am
the master!!!! /

When whites scam / it is said that it is a new style / But when the country
man does the same / White people shout: bring them, kill them, die! /

White people are greedy, I say they are greedy / I have seen through them
deeply (or very well) / So, when they fall into my trap / I will show them
fire (or showing someone who is the real boss by treating them harshly)

------
rdtsc
One of the general patterns is that spam calls happen to originate from the
area code where your phone was purchased from initially. This is nice because,
I ended up moving to a new are code. And the only people from the old area
code are in my contacts list. Another useful thing I noticed is that my
provider labels the calls as "Likely Scam", so then I know as well not to pick
up. But even with that I get about 1 or 2 calls every few days.

------
utefan001
I bought this last month for our land line and it has been awesome.

CPR Call Blocker Protect - White List Call Blocker - Protect Vulnerable Adults
- Block All Apart From Who You Want To Speak To.

[https://www.amazon.com/CPR-Call-Blocker-Protect-
Vulnerable/d...](https://www.amazon.com/CPR-Call-Blocker-Protect-
Vulnerable/dp/B00LL9H0FM)

~~~
hannasanarion
That's great for people with land-line phones and who regularly use phones to
talk to people they know.

For a ton of people, I'd bet most people on HN, phone is a medium of last
resort, used exclusively for emergencies, delivery drivers, and grandma.

~~~
anoncoward111
A landline phone, at $10 a month, is a pretty decent investment for anyone who
spends a lot of time at home. I almost exclusively only take interviews,
meetings, etc calls from my landline, solely because of call quality issues!

------
gesman
Calls from unknown/faked numbers auto-go to answering service.

Robocalls never leave messages.

Real person leaves message and I call back.

~~~
rjtobin
I get robocalls that leave messages about once a day. These days it's some
message in Mandarin. A few months ago it was something about health insurance
plans (same message every day).

------
S_A_P
I think this is a brilliant use case for the ML/AI voice avatar technology
that is becoming popular now. Feed it a few scripts, and write a shim
application that will allow you to let your avatar answer the robocall and
waste time...

~~~
ShorsHammer
No need to overengineer it. Lenny is a small collection of vague answers on
repeat, works just fine.

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

[https://instaud.io/2IHF](https://instaud.io/2IHF)

------
TeMPOraL
If we're using Quality-Adjusted Life Years as an economic metric for
evaluating health care, then we should seriously start considering robocalls
and telemarketers in general as a public health hazard.

------
ricardonunez
It used to be bad but using apps like MrNumber solved it for a while but not
anymore. The last six months it got horrible. Now it is more difficult because
they are local numbers and you never know who is who.

~~~
Scoundreller
Doubly so if you’re on-call and your organization owns the entire block of
numbers...

You have no choice but to answer.

------
wnevets
This must mean its working and making money. How the hell is giving these
people money?

~~~
flyinghamster
Phone companies make money on CNAM (Caller ID Name) lookups. Even at a
fraction of a cent per lookup, it adds up.

------
rudedogg
Any comments/reviews from people using YouMail to block robocalls?

