
On the Trail of the RoboCall King - rmason
https://www.wired.com/story/on-the-trail-of-the-robocall-king/
======
55555
Seems to me that the FCC doesn't actually want to stop these. Watch the senate
commission deposition(?) of Adrian Abramavich. He says all these calls are
routed through 5 or 6 tier-2+ VOIP firms who openly solicit robocall business
and then blend the traffic to prevent the most obvious red flags. Just pull
their licenses(?). Unless there's more to the story and everyone in the
industry is getting rich from this, which sounds like is the case. Remember
this is the same FCC that couldn't detect millions of fake anti-net neutrality
comments. C'mon. Are we really dumb enough to think that they're that dumb?

If everyone in the industry is getting rich from this and the FCC is serving
industry and not the people, then the plan of action would quite probably look
like this:

1\. Pass laws that make robocalls illegal to pacify the populace.

2\. Charge one or two operators a year in civil court max, but not enough to
actually deter people from doing it. And make sure to brand them names like
"the robocall king" so that people think you've actually made a huge dent in
robo-calling. Again, to pacify the populace.

3\. Don't actually enforce the laws you passed on any meaningful scale and
don't require technological changes which would stop this. Despite the fact
that it doesn't happen in any other country, even third world ones, pretend
that this is just a technologically intractable problem.

Pathetic.

~~~
Ruedii
Under Obama they made steps forward to stop these, penalties were drastically
increased, and an actual investigation team was put together, but Trump
defunded the efforts and now the complaint form leads to a massive master in
pile with no hope of a single message being read.

The phone companies ARE able to stop the caller ID spoofing with a simple
notch filter placed at the right point on the line, or packet filter on the
right place on the firewall.

They could easily force businesses to give a valid return number on their
calls and prevent jamming based caller ID spoofing, but instead they don't
want to because these calls mean more money for them.

~~~
dec0dedab0de
_The phone companies ARE able to stop the caller ID spoofing with a simple
notch filter placed at the right point on the line, or packet filter on the
right place on the firewall._

T-mobile already does, along with some other magic logic they have stopped
almost all of the spam calls from reaching me. ...Occasionally they block my
mom for a day or two, but it's worth it.

~~~
markovbot
I have a t-mobile line and a Google voice number, I don't give out the
T-Mobile number so 100% of legitimate calls come through Google Voice, but
100% of spam calls come through T-Mobile. Also I'm not sure when you're saying
they added this magical filtering but I've tested spoofing calls to myself and
other T-Mobile phones within the last few months and it works fine.

------
kimi
I wonder if one should not use a dialer to call them back, sending an
automated message until someone listens and acknowledges? They have a huge
outbound capability, but their weak spot is inbound and call completion - they
expect basically no call to complete. So anything that keeps their agents busy
will immediately reflect on the number of calls they make. Would it be legal?

~~~
janj
I answer most robo calls and usually try to call back after I get them to hang
up on me. The number is almost never in service. When it is and it leads to
the scammer I'll sometimes continue calling and messing with them until my
number is blocked by them. I've been messing with spam callers for more than
20 years. I wish more people would answer these calls and waste as much of
their time as possible.

~~~
kimi
Sometimes they leave a message on the voicemail, and in this case you do have
a number to be called back. I wonder if it would be legal for you to recall
them using a robodialer.

Say you implement something like this:
[https://www.wombatdialer.com/blog/blog/2017/03/17/outbounds-...](https://www.wombatdialer.com/blog/blog/2017/03/17/outbounds-
IVR-tutorial/) this is a reverse IVR, that keeps calling until it gets an
explicit acknowledgement. It is cheap to run (you set up a FreePBX somewhere),
it does not tire, and can go on until it gets a confirmation.

~~~
imglorp
It would need to be paired with something like Jolly Roger, above, which is
darn good at spoofing a human for a while. It would need a variety of voices
and scripts so the recipient humans wouldn't get trained on it too fast.

~~~
kimi
You could simply play a message of your voice that says "My number is
555-123-4444 please get me immediately off your list - press 7 to confirm".
They will hang up and the dialer will call again. And again.

------
Ruedii
The "in the wild" hack of the caller ID jammer is probably openly available if
you look hard enough.

There are also likely phone system commands to quickly verify the incoming
phone number a second time utilizing out of band signals. If how to derive how
to do this, one might be able to detect spoofed caller ID and retrieve the
actual source line information.

I wonder if either of these technologies could be used to detect robocalls.

Personally if I had the time and ability to write such a system, what I would
do to incoming robocalls is go and route them (and pressing one if it is
necessary) to an AI voice system just smart enough to pull the person's leg
for a few hours making the person run in circles trying to explain the deal to
what they think is a person who can't understand it. You know, robo the robo-
call.

~~~
willvarfar
Something like
[https://jollyrogertelephone.com/](https://jollyrogertelephone.com/) ?

If you haven't heard a few, listen to some of the calls on
[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3OxCWLEmoIhNMm-
hnvBm9Q](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3OxCWLEmoIhNMm-hnvBm9Q)

------
dmckeon
For $20 US a year for an app, robocalls are down to a few a month from several
a day on each of a VOIP and cell line. Nomorobo, Robokiller, and several more
- do some research, read some reviews, and pick one. I only wish it was as
easy to filter email spam for a 25-year-old email address. Telephone service
providers may offer robocall filtering as well. One can deal with the problem
now, or wait for Shaken/Stir, whichever.

~~~
Terretta
Be super careful as you do that research - check the Terms of Service. Some,
like Truecaller, are harvesting your call activity and network and reselling
it.

It appears Hiya and Nomorobo have sensible policies.

However...

The problem is the completely randomized neighbor calls.

They are “calling from” real numbers belonging to real people.

Hiya Premium has neighbor blocking, but only prefix by prefix, and you can’t
bulk add the prefixes.

It appears adding a prefix adds every individual number within that prefix to
the phone’s block list, and each call block plugin can only block so many
numbers, so the more prefixes you have, the more plugins have to be enabled.

“WideProtect” aims to simplify this, your mileage may vary:

[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/wideprotect-spam-call-
blocke...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/wideprotect-spam-call-
blocker/id1171024059?mt=8)

~~~
ElCapitanMarkla
WideProtect almost looks like what I want, I wish you could just do regex
filtering on the incoming numbers instead of this individual number crap.

------
Kiro
Why are robocalls not a thing in my country? (Sweden)

~~~
dewey
Because (at least in Germany) it's illegal and comes with very high fines.

> telephone calls to consumers for sales purposes are illegal if the calling
> company is not in possession of an explicit and effective declaration of
> consent by the consumer

[https://www.limegreenipnews.com/2017/08/germany-federal-
netw...](https://www.limegreenipnews.com/2017/08/germany-federal-network-
agency-imposes-record-fine-for-cold-call-advertising/)

~~~
luckylion
Since a lot of the robo calls are part of scams and illegal, I don't think
it's the fear of fines. I believe that market size and language barrier are a
bigger issue: Plenty of people speak english, few speak german and even fewer
are fluent enough in swedish to convince people to hand over their money.

~~~
_fizz_buzz_
The reason the number of robocalls exploded recently in the US is because the
FCC's order defining what an autodialer is was overruled.

There is an interesting reply all episode about it:
[https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-
all/awhk76/135-robocall-...](https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-
all/awhk76/135-robocall-bang-bang)

------
topherPedersen
Developer of RoboStop here. If anybody here in the comments section happen to
use an Android phone and are plagued by telemarketing calls from Indian dev
shops offering to build you a website, check out my app!
[http://robostop.org](http://robostop.org). It's pretty simple, just hangs up
on anyone not listed in your contacts. Very effective. Just make sure to turn
it off when you order an Uber.

P.S. it's not on the Play Store anymore because I got booted off along with
all of the other apps which access users CALL_LOG(s).

~~~
stef25
This morning cops called me to tell me I had 5 min to move my car or it would
get towed.

When my wife was pregnant the hospital called me to say she'd been admitted
after falling in the street.

Surely hanging up on anyone not in your contacts is a bad idea?

~~~
ElCapitanMarkla
I have to ignore numbers not in my contact list, I get 10+ scam calls a day.

I kind of worry about those situations but I'm just as likely to miss a call
being on the phone to these arseholes anyway.

I really want the ability to block certain country codes on my phone, 99% of
the scam calls are from outside of NZ.

------
rmason
I'm getting daily calls where they leave a voicemail in Chinese. I live in a
metro area where at most there are 0.05% Chinese speakers. The costs must be
so low they just do not care.

Course I block the numbers but they seem to have an almost endless supply.
Interestingly my Pixel doesn't report the call ever as suspected spam.

~~~
toast0
Calling to (continental) US numbers is easy to find for $0.01/minute, billed
to the second. If you've got volume, it's cheaper.

Blocking numbers of spam calls is like blocking numbers of spam email; most of
them are spoofed so it's most likely not to help.

------
deflector
I don't understand why the robocalls are a thing. Why are robocalls able to
cause such a stir? Why are they referred to as " _robocalls_ " in the first
place, when this is such a lowbrow term that it might imply that the victims
are part of the problem, due to an inability to adequately cope with something
that requires very little effort to deflect.

To give them a special name, in and of itself, raises phonecall spam to a new
level of shenanigans, when this is something of a script kiddie skill. Same as
email, this is a mild nuisance. It's not some crisis tearing at the fabric of
society.

It's sort of like complaining about how windows are transparent, and that you
shouldn't need curtains to prevent people from looking inside. It's like
there's this expectation that it should just be illegal to look inside any
window.

If it's a phone number, people are going to call it. If you don't want to be
disturbed, don't let your phone ring? If you only want to be disturbed by
familiar individuals, only ring for those numbers, or screen voice mail?

Seems... almost too easy to deflect this sort of thing.

~~~
travisporter
From TFA: Emergency room doctors, nurses, and first responders were getting
delayed alerts. This was not just an annoyance; it was a matter of life and
death.

What is your "almost too easy" solution? Block all local calls? Have you
applied for a job and expected a call back only to be directed to a
cruise/timeshare?

~~~
Scoundreller
Or they’re showing up a bit groggier on their next shift because their
sleep/nap got disjointed.

