It’s not just robocalls, as it’s also spoofing numbers. I have received many phone calls from average joes who said they were returning a call from my number, but I had never called them.
I’d say 95% of the calls I receive are spam. It’s so bad that I rarely even answer my phone anymore, instead letting it go to voicemail if the number is not in my contacts.
Everything in life has turned to spam. My physical mailbox, my email, and my phone is bombarded by spam and there’s practically nothing I can do about it.
The more troubling problem to me is that my government (United States) will drag their feet on just about any issue that matters to ordinary people--spam, climate change, overfishing, healthcare, etc--provided at least one corporate lobby of virtually any size at all advocates for the problem. Using this spam case to illustrate, it's taken a decade of multiple daily spam calls to virtually every single American for the government to budge on this issue (and still no solution is even on the table for snail mail spam); how are we ever supposed to tackle issues that only really affect a subset of Americans (e.g., healthcare), or which affect us all but invisibly/intangibly (e.g., overfishing, climate change, etc)?
If I had one policy wish it would be to completely eliminate corporate lobbying. Concerned citizens can lobby individually or in groups, but corporate donations, perks, etc to such people/groups would be tightly regulated with steep fines for trespassers.
A friend of mine is working on a book, arguing that the root problem is public votes by members of Congress. Prior to 1970 or so, Congress used secret ballots. You could lobby them but you wouldn't know whether they voted your way. A new law changed that in the name of "transparency" and corporate donations and lobbying took off in a big way after that.
We insist on secret ballots for individual voters so they can't sell their votes, but for our legislators whose individual votes are far more consequential, we've given up on it.
In exchange, we get to see how they voted and "hold them accountable." But we can't do that nearly so effectively as corporate donors. Most of us don't look at voting records at all; our information mostly comes from attack ads taking votes out of context.
It may be that prior to 1970 or so the number of bills (or the number of bills salient to major donors, or whatever) passed by voice vote rather than recorded vote was higher, that’s a harder claim to assess. But it is certainly not the case that Congressional votes either (1) were ubiversally nonrecorded prior to sometime around 1979, or (2) cannot be by voice vote today.
I hadn't realized that there were secret ballots before.
Recently, the House Republicans publicly voted to back Marjorie Taylor Greene (strong Trump supporter) but also had a secret ballot to back Liz Cheney (Trump critic, voted to impeach, #3 in House Republican hierarchy).
It seemed obvious that if the second vote was public that Liz Cheney probably would have been censured and lost her position.
The US Government acts like your US mail is a sacrosanct communication channel that if they send you something it doesn't get drowned out by junk mail.
Basically, our society says: any communication channel you will have to deal with a 10% to 90% ratio of useful communication vs forced against your consent advertising and fraud, even in _the_ constitutionally mandated/provisioned official government communication channel..
It did not work out for the PLC's democracy, which entered a state of perpetual deadlock, and became a cautionary tale
taken into account by the framers of the US Constitution.
Hmmm. They’ll redefine it like when someone in the admin said the old definition of infrastructure needs to be redefined in order to accommodate their goals.
Likewise they would redefine what spam is if there were a referendum.
How can you expect us to not create one when corporations are constantly trying to screw us? How do you mean keeping it from becoming corrupt? Are you suggesting that not having one is somehow better? Anything the corporations have to pay in order to lobby is a plus. Even if you just stack up the money they have to pay and light it on fire.
With some numbers it is absolutely unbearable. I have a landline I've had for a very long time and it gets the infamous "extend car warranty" spam call about every other week. On my ~15 year old cell phone# I get that same call also about every other week on average.
But last year I got a new phone with a new number.. wow! It is completely unusable as a phone. Relentless nonstop spam calls every hour as well as continuous SMS spam. I've had to mute everything and send everything straight to spam except for a couple known numbers that I allow through. Nobody except family will ever be able to call me on the new phone because there's no way to enable unknown calls on it without having it ring nonstop.
Personally I am most offended by the calls offering website and SEO services for the domain I purchased a decade ago without masking the registration, because I've professionally worked on (a) making a website, (b) search ranking and (c) SEO.
It's the one call that makes me want to shout, "DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?", but since there is no reason anyone would know who I am, I'd just feel silly, and I'm not the sort of person who shouts into telephones anyway.
This is terrible especially when you're applying for jobs. All calls from unknown numbers have to be answered because you never know who's calling you back.
Agreed. While talking to companies about a new role last year, I'd only unblock the phone at the specific time I was expecting a call.
I did miss a few calls when recruiters called me without scheduling it first. I made it clear they needed to email me first with a call time, or I wouldn't be reachable. Sad, but that's how terrible the spam problem is on phones these days.
I almost always get voicemails from the robots. Often enough they don't actually say anything but they stay on the line long enough for it to happen. I just get an empty voicemail with static. Fills up my voicemail too so I have to go clear it
Every other week? I get "extended warranty" spam calls a dozen times a day on average. Like many commenters here I don't answer my phone unless I know the number.
Every other week on the old phone numbers. On the new phone# it is relentless all day, I stopped tracking and just block everything except known family numbers.
I agree with most of what you say, except for email.
Because of such things like DKIM, I really don't have an email spam problem, or if I do, it is because I signed up for it myself.
Because there is a record of who is transmitting the message, hosts and ISP's that transmit spam get punished by having their emails ignored. It is thus in their best interest to make sure they behave well, and deal quickly with any complaints.
The big difference in phone spam is lack of accountability. I believe if you fix that, the problem can be solved pretty quickly
I'm amazed at google's spam filters. They catch like 99% of the spam from an email I've probably had for 12 years or so. Every now and then something slips through but it's pretty good. When I look at the spam folder I see I probably get 20:1 spam:legit email.
And gmail spam filters are very bad, in comparison. My own email server gets way less spam than my gmail account, and never any false positives, which are a huge problem on gmail.
On my own mailserver with spamassassin, I had my very first false positive in years just yesterday. It seemed that however the organisation emailing me does it, they're using mail hosts on blocklists.
> Because of such things like DKIM, I really don't have an email spam problem, or if I do, it is because I signed up for it myself.
Running home and work mail servers, I would disagree. If I let my shields down, I get kajillions of spam emails from snowshoe [0] spam operators (assuming it's not all the same operation!), coming from hundreds of IP addresses in dozens of /24s, all with random word salad domain names, valid DKIM, and valid DMARC, with domain registrations that lead nowhere. Blocking whole /24s and certain egregious TLDs is the only way to stem the tide. As long as there are ISPs, colo/cloud providers, and registrars who are willing to pocket the cash and look the other way, nothing's going to improve.
Yes! It is interesting, and quite a twist, that spam in email is by far the least of spam problems these days. I get hardly any spam ever on email anymore (on my own email server). Was going to say once a month but no, it's way less than that.
And yet, I'm getting a constant barrage of spam over SMS and voicemail, there's no stopping that.
>instead letting it go to voicemail if the number is not in my contacts
At some point I stopped checking my voicemail and it seems to have broken. I am better off for it, because now I no longer am notified about new voicemails.
I sucks even worse for those of us on organ transplant lists. We don't know if the random number that calls us is the call we are expecting. Though mostly I just answer the call and don't say anything because most recorded scripts don't start unless you say something first.
Maybe it does not have to be. Someone should take a swing at that.
The message they get is "you have reached [name] phone, please use SMS or email. This message box is not monitored."
Best thing I have done.
Not everyone can. I wish it were otherwise.
I do answer most calls, and all calls when I am waiting on something critical.
Robocalls got bad this year.
Sadly, they are all recordings. I used to have great fun with the live ones!
You can see that scene in "Boiler Room" where the guy gets a call from someone pitching a local paper to get a good idea of the fun.
I used to pick a rando goal based on my first impression. These ranged from a friendly exchange, pep talk, stall or troll, up through encouraging them to quit and walk out while I keep the line hot... (That guy from Vonage who I had on the ropes? Sorry in hindsight man. I really, really did want to just cancel, and... well, you were the lucky draw that day. Nothing personal.)
I stopped getting voicemails too. Someone told me it said my voicemail box was full. No
notifications to me. So I was unaware unless someone told me or I call my own number. Using visual voicemail on a iPhone with prepaid service.
my text messages recently surpassed 5 spam messages per day. In the not too distant future my phone will cease to serve any useful function related to being a "phone".
my phone did that when the phone became just an app on a device in my pocket. the only reason i have a phone number is you can't get a cell signal to a phone like device without one.
I haven’t gotten spam sfuff on tablet SIM card numbers. Not sure if calls even work on those. You could try that. Don’t need to have the sim in a tablet of course.
hmmmmm, now that is interesting. However, my luck, I'd get flagged as not abiding by some agreed to, by use, contract/ToS for using a tablet SIM in a non-tablet device as defined by some lawyer to avoid this very thing.
Yeah it’s not supposed to be allowed. I’ve been told by a T-Mobile employee on Reddit and discord (big community for T-Mobile lol) that they aren’t going to do anything usually.
My cousin in HS runs her family’s tablet SIM card in an old iPhone and runs ads to make a dollar a day. They end up using close to 100 GB a month.
The other carriers could be stricter.
Maybe something to check up on a bit. But not a big deal regardlsss hah.
I don't have this problem on my personal phone, but my work phone the voicemail is garbage and so are my text messages. I just look at exchange and skype, ignoring the rest. My personal phone shows as a landline if you look it up, maybe that is why?
For Verizon at least, it is an option, but stupidly it is a paid option. I had checked 2 years ago and they wanted ~$3/month for the privilege of not providing voicemail.
Turns out it was easier to borrow a friend's phone and leave myself a bunch of voicemail to fill up the storage.
Most people don't know you can just dial ##004# to remove all conditional call forwards that normally default to voicemail. Or if the network doesn't unset it, you can set it to a deadend like * 004 *0000000000# - or some other fun automated line...
Even your email? I feel like in this one domain, we have pretty much won the war against spam. Gmail does a great job of spam filtering, and I expend some effort to guard my email address against 1) other people's mistakes, and 2) real spam. Wrong/spammy things that come to me get an unsubscribe or a Gmail filter, or right into the spam bucket. Have you looked inside your spam folder lately? My God!! The only thing people want to sell is money and sex.
I'm annoyed by McDonald's France, someone who presumably lives in France made a mistake and subscribed my email to their list, and when I tried unsubscribing using their link, I get a "you're not in our geographical service area" nonsense, so I can't unsubscribe truly. Right into the trash filter they go. On my shitlist are all companies that allow subscription or signup w/o an email verification.
My phone is on answer-only-if-known. It makes me hard to find, true, but I like it that way. If someone really needs to find me, they will. Dentist, contractors, recruiters, applies to all.
My mailbox is next to the paper recycling bin. Garbage gets sorted in there immediately. It hurts me to see resources get wasted this way, and I wish the USPS would raise the price for this garbage. I've read somewhere that first class mail subsidizes junk mail, I don't know if that's true. I'm all for the USPS making tons of money off commercial mailers. Do you ever see junk delivered by UPS/FedEx? Even one bulky envelope? Never!
I see Gmail as one part of Google. It's hides the ads from one part and displays them elsewhere. I minimize my contribution to the whole process whenever possible. My spamassassin filter doesn't have a junk mail folder, it all goes to /dev/null.
The USPS is the source of your snail mail spam, not the solution.
protip is to get an area code far away from where you live. If you get a call from that area code, chances are you can ignore it. If it is serious enough, they will leave a message.
Butm regarding spam, yea, it is pretty bad. My HOA piles on by sending letter about "canning spam" with links to spam removal sites and such that I just trash because I am not trying to fight that war.
I used to live in another state, just over a line for a different area code then where my work and friend were. I know nobody in the 920 area code, but I get about 4-5 calls a day from random numbers in that area code. Makes filtering much easier. Plus the Pixel's automatic screening of suspicious numbers is pretty awesome.
There is always a small minority of those whiners complaining that Google is too powerful and destroying their business when if their emails were actually desired they would be contacted back.
No that is you relabeling things you don't like. Just because publishers call unauthorized reproduction and distribution piracy doesn't mean you can just start referring to added arbitrary subfees to bills child molestation.
AMP links, search results with ads at higher placement, reordered news feeds to drive engagement of viral content, streamlined interfaces (goodbye URL) that belie a sinister purpose...
We did this to ourselves by not making our systems Sybil resistant or DoS resistant. Bitcoin solves this problem by requiring a fee to submit a transaction to the ledger (Denial of Service). lightning does this by requiring you to select who you network with (sybil). Solution is for any modality is to restrict to known good addresses, and for anyone else charge a substantial fee.
This baffles me as a Canadian, I get maybe 1 spam call a month, no flyers, pihole blocks most ads, and gmail seems to filter out most email I don’t want to see.
How come robocalls and junk mail are so much worse for you?
From what I've read about the research here, there is something around 1% of the population that regularly answers and interacts with spam calls. Obviously, there's a lower rate for which portion of those follow through and result in a transfer of money. Apparently, the cost of robocalling is less that that fraction of 1% penetration rate. Since almost every aspect of America is about money anymore, that's why we have so much robo call spam: there's enough money to be made doing it by those who do it that it's economically viable for them... so they do it, everything else be damned.
Note, this was about 6 years ago. I don't know if the current market is the same.
Watch a few Jim Browning vids on YT or some of the other scammbaiter calls and you will understand better. People are mailing these guys 20k in cash in fedex boxes. Then mules here in the US pick it up at an airbnb/hotel/whatever (they hang around and wait for the truck to show up and claim it), take it home take a small cut and wire the rest along up the chain. You get a couple of those and it pays the whole call center for a few months... They estimate the straight out scams are around 20 billion a year. The quasi 'legal' 'cold call' stuff is probably much higher.
They are targeting older people who maybe let their spouse take everything and that spouse is dead.
Really? I gave family in Canada and they get a ton of random spam calls on their phone and a ton of spam email. I'll give you the lack of flyers though.
It still applies. Those are robo-calls, which means they reach a large number of people. Similar to the Nigerian Prince email scams, the scammers are depending on most people dismissing them as scams because the scammers don't want to waste their time with people who they have no chance of extracting money from. In this case, if you speak Chinese and you reply, the scammers have a high chance of scamming money from you—you're probably a new immigrant, either elderly or an exchange student, and unfamiliar with local laws and the English language. The same scam would never work in China.
> I have received many phone calls from average joes who said they were returning a call from my number, but I had never called them.
I've run into that, and don't get me started about phone companies being unwilling to insure Caller ID is accurate, even when they charge you for it. I'm looking at you, AT&T. The VoIP service I ported my landline out to costs less per month than what AT&T wanted just for Caller ID.
> Everything in life has turned to spam. My physical mailbox, my email, and my phone is bombarded by spam and there’s practically nothing I can do about it.
Also add your cell phone (if you run Android) and your desktop OS (if you run Windows 10).
I host my own email, and block a number of TLDs on sight simply because they've been nothing but spam cannons.
More and more, I find myself forgoing consumer tech products in general, or looking before I leap. Consumer routers suck, consumer NASes suck [0], I sure as hell don't want my heating system connected to the network in any way, nor my car. Smart lighting? Only if it doesn't depend on someone else's computer to function (so, IKEA for me, and even there I'm considering firewalling it so it doesn't auto-update).
Definitely consider USPS form 1500 if you have any repeat offenders [0]. If it's possible to interpret the spam as trying to sell you something then courts have broadly upheld your right to personally decide what kinds of content are excessively offensive without any additional oversight. Credit card offer? Discount to buy a used car? Nah, it's sexually explicit advertising that won't make it into your mailbox again without a hefty windfall.
Also, credit offers lately have been including fine print specifying how to opt out from all of them (the culprit there is credit rating agencies selling your data). That might be CA specific? Anywho, if you jump through a few hoops you can opt out from that particular source of spam for life.
> my email
If you don't need to receive inbound connections from unknown sources (e.g., recruiters) then switch your email to whitelist mode and just allow your contacts. Otherwise, at least create a few accounts to compartmentalize that part of your life. Logins and promotions go into a bucket you never read unless you're expecting an auth code or something, and you can keep your personal email filtered to a whitelist. Depending on your skillset this can be much easier to manage and customize if you host it yourself.
> my phone
I have no practical advice here; nothing I've tried yet has an appropriate balance of usability and effectiveness. Whitelist solutions aren't as great because it's uncommon for one phone to support multiple numbers simultaneously, and voip solutions can have prohibitive drawbacks depending on your use habits.
As a partial solution, Google's dialer (disclosure, noogler, but I liked this product before starting too) is decent at detecting spam if you're using a new enough version of Android that you can install it. It still clutters up your call history till you manually mark calls as spam, but in the moment if you're expecting a new number to call you can have high confidence that if Google hasn't marked it as likely spam that it's probably the call you're expecting.
FWIW I get almost no spam on my email at all these days. I use disposable addresses (via Yahoo) for all stores and aggressively filter emails from listservs and stores, but after that I get next to no spam. What spam I do get is picked up nearly perfectly by Gmail's spam filter. Agreed about phone spam though, it's pretty terrible.
the underlying problem is that spam of any format is very cheap. if just 1% of people respond, it pays for sending out all of the robocalls/texts/emails. it's very difficult to legislate against economics like that
what we need are better spam filters for calls, texts and physical mail. allow people to pay to blacklist numbers that have a high probability of being spam. I'd imagine that "real" numbers get an average level of incoming calls, messages and push notifications that a spam number wouldn't
it might also make sense to allow private or government white listing. ie, prove that your phone number belongs to a "real" person potentially by paying a one time application fee. with enough adoption, that could change the spam economic equation
> It’s not just robocalls, as it’s also spoofing numbers.
I get a phone number that is outside of my area code so if I get a phone call from that area code, I know 99.999% that it is spam (and probably spoofed).
I had to grab a screen shot of it when it happened to me. Of course, that screen shot is only meaningful to me, as it just looks like a regular screen shot of an incoming call to anyone else.
Don't forget web ads - I would classify them in the same set as the examples you pointed to. They basically "blast" content at you to convince you of something.
Toothless, unenforceable laws are not worth the paper they aren't written on. They are primarily so the politicians writing/voting for them can pat themselves on the back as they tell their sheeple that they have done something.
I don’t think I’ve picked up a phone call in 2 years. Text me or email me no exceptions. So much spam I see increased on voicemails the past year. Clearly all scam.
I guess you don't schedule a lot of medical appointments or work with contractors.
I wish I could block all unknown numbers, but I'll miss the rescheduling call from the roofer who had to borrow his wife's cell because his fell out of his pocket, or I'll miss the "please confirm you're coming to your appointment tomorrow" and now I've lost a doctor's appointment I scheduled weeks in advance, etc.
The solution to this is to get a phone number from an area code that you don't live in.
Almost all spam calls now spoof the number to give it the same area code as your phone.
So I know any call coming from a local area code is probably legit. Most calls coming from the same area code as my number or from a random area code or even 800 number is usually spam.
>The solution to this is to get a phone number from an area code that you don't live in.
Getting a new number is not a realistic "solution" for many people because they've had their old cellphone # for decades and it's already deeply entrenched with all their relatives, friends, doctors' emergency contact numbers, airlines notifications, bank fraud alerts vis SMS, etc, etc.
E.g. Most of my friends & family have had the same wireless phone numbers for more than 20 years which they've deliberately kept even when changing carriers.
People still want to keep their familiar number; they just want the spam robocalls to stop. Yes, buying a new area code # (which btw costs ~$40 admin charge with AT&T) ... and then expending a lot of effort to "propagate" the new number to all your contacts and website profiles is not impossible but it's a burden many don't want to tackle.
Some celebrities manage spam by always having at least 2 different cell phones. So a high-profile Hollywood actor would have:
(1) personal phone for spouse & kids & the agent that brings in the money. This number is a closely guarded secret and never shared with anyone or websites' account profiles. This phone's ringer can be set to "silence unknown callers not in the contact list".
(2) separate "burner" phone for everybody else.
The (2) business phone # is changed out monthly because it inevitably leaks out with all the people that have it. But (1) personal phone is only changed if it was leaked by a insider employee at AT&T or TMobile. But again, it's another unrealistic "solution" for most because regular people don't want to buy and carry around 2 separate phones. Yes, some phones can use dual SIMs but only the expensive models ... and it also requires paying extra for 2 numbers on the monthly bill.
Hopefully, an eventual solution that combines:
- more effective FCC crackdowns and penalties
- SHAKEN/STIR anti-spoofing,
- intelligent spam filters at the wireless carrier level,
- better call management tools in iOS/Android
... would be a more sane approach than buying new phone numbers to escape the spam.
So you really only would have gotten 2 spam calls had you used my method to ignore. Unless you regularly get important calls from numbers you don't know in other locales, I don't. But they can leave a message if they do.
Your roofer or doctor or whoever should have only a local area code. So out of those 27 spam calls, you only need to answer the 2 that came in from where you live now.
Also, this probably goes without saying but if you choose this route, find an area code in which you likely don't know anyone. I have an area code from a state in which I previously lived so I still don't know whether it's a spam call or an old contact.
I accidently did this! I moved away from an area and everyone I know basically did the same thing. So pretty much if it is that area code almost every time it is some spam call. I have been playing the 'clueless old guy' on some of them. It is kind of fun if you are bored. Most of them are left unanswered. Last year a new type showed up, VC guys trying to buy my house (usually well below market rate).
This worked pretty well for me, probably because I use google voice for my primary number. My actual cell number is in another state far away and anything coming in with that number I just don't answer.
This is exactly the point. I happen to have a landline which somehow is associated with a demographic profile of a senior citizen. I’ve had this number for over a decade now. The number of scam calls targeting seniors is staggering.
Of the 200-300 spam robocalls I receive every month, about 50-80 are blocked by my cell phone (the landline rings to my cell) and I also subscribe to nomorobo on the landline, which I assume blocks even more. Still, that’s some 200 calls that make it through even with two levels of blocking.
The scams are terrifying- serious sounding people on the line saying your social security number will be cancelled and you will be arrested unless you speak immediately to an officer; Medicare advantage scams; IRS and treasury scammers... and since my personal info is published by the phone company, many times the scammers have all my personal information as “proof”! It’s a sickening information asymmetry that can totally fool an unsuspecting older person who doesn’t entirely understand what’s going on.
We need to start targeting the companies who profit from it: the telcos who deliver the calls (i.e. AT&T, Verizon, etc.). That’s the only way to get a solution.
Telcos get a multiple benefits from spam: they charge fees to the originating carriers, and in the long term it kills voice service which they have been eager to shut down for at least a decade. Data is clearly the future and that’s where they make most of their money. People giving up on wireline voice allows them to more easily make the argument to shut down all that old wireline infrastructure.
I don't think they have to fulfill the call. I can block a number from calling me - and they don't have to let the call go through. They don't have to let folks harass.
It isn't even a technical issue: "mobile companies can in fact block most robocalls but choose not to, in large part because it costs money to do so and at the same time they make money from those calls." (from the article).
In other words, they can still allow me to choose to block those calls, but it seems they only really offer it to non-prepaid customers, charge a fee for the service, and don't exactly advertise that they have the ability.
One hack if you get those robocalls that match your area code. Get a new phone number for an area code you think you’ll never go to and use a smart blocking app[1] to block the entire area code.
It’s a brutalist solution that’s not for everyone, but it has restored my sanity.
I used something just like that for a year, and then iOS changed the rules about whether apps are allowed to intercept calls before they ring, and it just stopped working.
Do you vouch for this app working within the last 6 months?
Yes. I do not get 803 calls at all anymore. Am on iOS 14.4.2. I also use T-Mobile Scam Shield so I can see all the calls that have come in from the carrier’s perspective, so before iOS blocks them.
It’s interesting, of the last 24 calls from the 803 area code (most recent was yesterday) only 9 were identified as spam by T-Mobile and blocked by them. The others were blocked by the WideProtect app. Certain all of them were spam.
(I lived in SC 10+ years ago. The only people I met there are in my contacts and excluded from the blocklist.)
That's good enough for me to spend $3. Thanks so much. I dug into how this particular app works, and it turns out those iOS restrictions are still in place- but the app developer is clever, and is literally turning our prefix blocks into millions of actual blocked numbers. And while he can't intercept calls, he CAN manually add and remove numbers from the built-in system block list.
Is there an easy way to set up wide protect for an entire area code properly? The last time I tried it, it just kept freezing my phone and timing out instead of finishing all the lists.
These apps do not intercept the calls. All they can do is call an API to tell the OS a list of numbers to block. This is good from a privacy standpoint but bad from an effectiveness standpoint, because apps can't do any real-time analysis of incoming calls to make a decision. They just have to periodically update a static list of blocked numbers.
This is a technique I largely stumbled into. My phone number is from when I lived in a different area, close to family. I've since moved to a new area code. Anyone that I know from that area code is already in my contacts. But a large portion of the spoofed spam numbers use my area code, and while I don't block them wholesale, it's easy to ignore any numbers from that area code.
Good start, but ideally networks should also be required to provide originator info (number, network, country of origin, as many hops as available basically) to cell phones, regardless of whether a call is blocked or has a different number set as caller id.
So not only would the networks be blocking spam, end-users could then block whatever calls they want. Don't wanna get calls from any VOIP numbers or anyone out of your country? You can block them and chill out.
Nope they have to have it in place by June or July of this year I believe. If the software allows it I will drop any unsigned calls immediately, don't even let them go to voicemail. Let them keep shouting into the void. No I don't care if it causes some companies issues. I'm sick of spam calls. My car warranty is doing just fine.
It’s a good point. At the device level we don’t really have the same controls as we do with email spam. Maybe a 3rd party app like RoboKiller will be able to detect that unsigned call but I have a feeling this won’t be the case.
I think we've all taken the wrong approach to the phone spam problem.
Whenever I get a scam call, I always answer. I let the guy do his spiel about the free vacation he's got for me, then when he asks me for my credit card, I hit him with one of the ligma jokes [0] and hang up. Never takes more than five minutes of my time and it's a source of great joy for me. I've gotten the same guy three times and he's fallen for it every single time; at this point I'm starting to develop a bond with him.
If we pushed a social movement that popularized this, we could basically DDOS phone scamming out of being viable.
That wastes a lot of my time as a call receiver. I'd rather the telephone companies do this for me instead.
They could put together an automated service to receive calls from blacklisted numbers instead of just blocking them. That service would play along with the scam and keep them on the line as long as possible. A YouTuber my wife watches, Kitboga, tried something like that about a year ago[0].
Unfortunately, something like this isn't quite as effective for robocalls.
Around here I mostly get calls from "Microsoft Support". I tell them I need to get to my computer and put the phone down on the table. They are surprisingly patient. When they get desperate to talk with me I'll spout a little giberish which keeps them connected a little longer.
It does not take much effort keeping them busy. It works for me as it is not a problem to block the line for 5 - 10 minutes.
If I am bored I engage with the call. But that spiel is getting old.
I may have written this in the past, but I still don't get why we still use PSTN where identifying caller is next to impossible, and very easy to be exploited (allowing mass dialing easily)
E-mail is not perfect, for example, but at least its address provides bit more context than the seemingly random number showing up, legit or not.
If we are insisting to use the current system, norm really should shift to a strict white list at least for residential inbound. The current system is simply not sustainable, and more and more people are not taking the call from the number they don't recognize anyways.
- PSTN is well-established. The phone network has had global reach for a very long time, probably longer than the Internet. Phone numbers have been part of people's lives for a century.
- Some locations in some countries are probably still using mostly analog switching equipment and can't upgrade to cellular or anything more modern/secure for various reasons.
- PSTN has government-agency
or at least a subsidized/privileged monopoly status in most countries, so it won't die a natural death.
I just wonder why it took until iOS 12 or whatever for my phone to be able to drop calls from unknown contacts.
It's easy to write spam off as a minor annoyance, but you're not the intended target. Your parents and grandparents are, and your immigrant neighbor who doesn't speak English well, and the intellectually disabled woman who waves to you at the grocery store. These are predators who prey on the vulnerable and ignorant and ruin lives on a daily basis. They are the absolute scum of the earth.
> you're not the intended target. Your parents and grandparents are
A significant number of the spam calls I get are just dead air. Like, ring ring, I pick up, I say hello {myname} here, and I hear nothing.
I wonder if they're filtering out young voices? If I said hello in a quavery weak voice, would they start their pitch? Or is it some hapless scammer who just can't figure out how to set up his robocalling software?
I think these are calls with a potentially live person at the other end. Their system dials X numbers simultaneously and then hands off any answers to an operator. If there's no available operator then you'll just get dead air.
I talk to scammers regularly. To waste their time, and also learn about what they do and how they operate.
When I answer a call in my normal voice, they might hang up right away. They hang around more if I try and sound like an old person, or talk slower (like I may have lower cognitive or language skills).
I would love that someone investigated why Google pulled call recording API from Android 9 onwards.
Given that I was scammed by insurance companies twice over the phone and I could have lost substantial amount of money if I couldn't prove the scam, I think call recording feature is essential for a consumer to be able to protect themselves from distance selling scammers or even honest mistakes.
There are other benefits like being able to record your parents or other family members and keep their voice forever or simply being able to listen again your conversation with a doctor, so you don't have to bother the clinic if you forget something about dosage etc.
The official reason is that it is for privacy (oh good lord...) and that in some countries it is illegal and basic narrative is that they don't want people to secretly record others.
This falls apart quickly - you can record someone secretly using your built-in phone camera and microphone, but somehow that's okay, they won't disable the camera and in my country, for example, call recording is perfectly fine.
So who lobbied Google? Removing such API is not a trivial task, it takes time, planning, resources, developers and then dealing with the fallout. Who wanted people to be defenceless against phone scams?
The API was never removed, it's just behind a system permission (only system apps can be granted this permission).
Before Marshmallow (2015), recording phone calls was behind the same permission as recording the mic. This was obviously bad as voice calls are much more privacy sensitive than the mic.
In Marshmallow, phone calls recording was updated to be guarded by a new permission, a system one, so only system application can access it.
Nevertheless, there were multiple ways to bypass the new system permission, which call recording apps made use to continue recording calls even without the system permission.
Those ways were fixed one after the other as part of securing and refactors of the audio stack. The last such bug was fixed in Android 9.
Any OEM can bundle a call recording apps, it's just that many don't.
This is interesting - there is plenty of recording apps and suddenly users no longer can use them and Google killed their business. I wonder if that broke any anti-trust laws.
It's kind of like Google disabled features that let apps like Whatsapp work and then only allowed phone manufacturer to install their own chat app...
Does it mean if I had a rooted phone I could get the call recording working on latest Android?
I am still going with 2018 phone and it's a bit worn now. Only thing that stops me from buying a new phone is that missing feature and when I ask about call recording the sellers would say yes there are plenty of apps in Play Store, but they don't know these apps don't work.
I don't know how reliably I can find out if the phone at least has a manufacturer's call recording app.
> Does it mean if I had a rooted phone I could get the call recording working on latest Android?
Some phone hardware architecture can't let the AP (the Processor running Android) access the call audio (because the audio stream is routed directly from the mic/speaker to the modem).
On those no amount of root hacking will allow you to record calls.
Nevertheless this is rare nowadays where all the audio goes through an ADSP connected to the AP.
Your best bet is to find a phone manufacturer/vendor that advertise call recording support. Alternatively search on call recording website like [1] which phone they support rooted.
[1] https://www.boldbeast.com/android/call_recorder.html
I read that if you root your phone, then usage of any banking apps would be problematic, so that seems like a no go.
On the Boldbeast forum there are some phones listed that work, but it seems like this depends on the region the phone comes from.
I think I will have to buy a phone, see if it works and if not return. Rinse and repeat... What a nightmare.
I met Ajit shortly after he started in his role. I specifically told him how we can track and trace back these robocalls via SS7 (at least once they hit the PSTN - SIP ingress even easier to track back to the trunks they originate), and I even had proof of concept code and examples. He seemed really excited, then did nothing. No follow-up, etc. It would only work if mandated by the FCC because there is no financial incentive for the telcos to do it.
The FCC should not only force them to block all robocalls, but fine them an amount in the billions for what amounts to pissing in the well of public trust for decades. I mean, I don’t ever answer a number I don’t recognize anymore. If the doctors office calls, and I don’t remember the number, they are going to have to leave a message and play phone tag. What is the social cost of an entire population of people who basically don’t trust their phone or anyone who calls them? Some survey company tried to call me last year, and I didn’t answer it because I assumed it was some kind of scam. It doesn’t have to be this way. The way phone companies have conducted themselves constitutes gross negligence and betrayal of the public trust. I want to see jail time, not a slap on the wrist.
I'm always flabbergasted at seeing how these things are handled in America.
Long ago in the country where I live, the regulator:
- set up an opt-out central register where the
owner of any phone number can freely declare they do not want any unsollicited calls
- made this register freely available to all businesses
- required from telcos that they make it easy for customers to report infringing calls
- made telcos liable if they do not swiftly take action whenever they have 'sufficient' reports (10s not 1000s) that one of their clients is infringing on the opt-out list, including by cutting off all of the client's numbers.
Nobody is talking about sales pitches - the FTC in the USA also has a do not call list.
This is about scam callers that set up pop up operations make a few bucks close down and repeat. This happens just as much here in the EU. Most of these calls do not even come from the EU/USA though they do have operatives here. The vast majority of victims are older people that don’t understand they are being scammed.
All of the scam/robocalls I get come from India and use spoofed numbers. We have do-not-call lists, but why should a telco across the world care about it? How can we even identify the relevant telco when the scammers are routing VoIP calls through spoofed numbers?
Phone companies know if it's spoofed or VOIP. They could just not forward spoofed numbers, or inform your cell phone that it's a spoofed number so you can silently block it on your end (or auto-respond with your own bot that pretends to be a person lol).
It would be nice if there were an Adnauseam[1] that answered calls for me and carried on a life-like humanoid conversation with the spammer or asked a question as a CAPTCHA.
The Google Pixel has a feature which can answer a call for you with a recording. It then asks why they are calling and shows a transcript on the screen for you. You can ask some preset questions as well. That way you don't have to actually pick up unless they are someone you acctually need to talk to. A lot of robocalls auto-hangup when they get to this assistant for some reason anyways.
It takes me far more time to sort through all the crap I get in my mailbox delivered by USPS. I either don't answer the call, or hang up 5 seconds after answering.
In general I worry that blocking legitimate "robocalls" will make people miss important events. My mortgage company was trying to contact me and the phone was displaying "Spam Likely". Another instance last year was my city sending out an emergency alert for a hurricane.
Is the average number of daily calls even 5? The poorest are probably not on the high end of that distribution in any case. It also doesn't need to be applied to regular mobile numbers - just VOIP numbers. At the call volumes these spammers use there is no way they are using diverted SIM/mobile numbers.
Another solution is to make the call cost $0.05 or some nominal cost unless the call duration is longer than 20 seconds. Or make calls that are unanswered cost more, etc.
Make it per contact per month. Most people reoccur calls to the same few people. Theres a way to get creative to penalize spammers but keep it cheap for customers.
Yes, definitely. My parents have "unlimited calls", and they regularly call people for a conversation that you would have via whatsapp/sms. They might even call the same person 5 times in the same day (and that person on another day might call them 5 times).
Not from my perspective: I keep receiving UK phone number spam calls, and I do not even live in the UK. So far I blocked all UK numbers using a blocker app.
This is due to the some UK numbers being "reusable" as well and location bound. There are numbers from businesses who went bankrupt and are now being used as they sometimes show up as "named numbers".
You're incorrect, and underestimating the potential profit vs cost. 5c per outbound call, but even if the scammers get 1 or two people a day for $100 (and likely MUCH more), it's just a drop in the bucket to operating costs.
I doubt I'm incorrect. There were 46 billion robocalls in 2020. That would be a $2.3 billion operating cost. Make it 10 cents and its 4.6 billion. Robocallers are not making 2-5 billion per year scamming people.
I wonder what’s the ballpark of what spammers are making and spending. And if that really is significant enough profit to the carriers to prompt inaction on an issue that clearly degrades the experience for the rest of their users.
Or maybe this issue couldn’t be solved unilaterally, where one carrier could offer much better spam protection as a competitive advantage, and the industry is too decrepit for group effort that doesn’t have direct implications on their bottom line.
Doesn't the system to bill people's phone lines still exist? I presume telcos have made that immune to number spoofing since there's money on the line.
Just make it so that reporting the call as spam triggers a $1 charge to the caller. Something that won't ruin anybody's life if their ex-spouse decides to be a shitty person, but enough that it makes spam calling no longer profitable.
another one. A calls B, A now owes 9999.. to B (via phone company, billing), if B calls A back at least once, we now know there is a link and every call between these two numbers goes as usual. two birds with one stone. punish robocallers, awards those affected by them.
Legal threats and spam blacklists are an endless game of whack-a-mole. I'm not convinced robocalls will ever disappear until the telephone protocol is updated so a receiver can confidently verify the identity of the sender. Once calls are authenticated, the problem will evaporate practically overnight.
Interesting that seems to be an exclusively American problem (as far as I know). I’ve experienced exactly 0 robocalls in all the other countries I’ve lived. My friends and I are constantly astounded when our American friends complain about spam calls, it’s just unheard of here and everywhere else I’ve ever lived.
Google Voice’s call screening feature has made robocalls a non event for me. I have Voice set to screen calls, so when the robocall comes in, it usually hangs up when it encounter’s Voice’s questions. I get one ring on my cell phone and nothing else. It’s somewhat satisfying every time it happens.
I get 7-10 spam text messages/week to my GV number. Most of them are addressed to someone named "Miller." It's been occurring for over a year and GV never detects that it's a spam text message. "Miller, you've won this. Click on this link." GV obviously doesn't do any spam detection on SMS if it isn't catching these.
shaken/stir is supposed to go in July, I hope that the tools that come on phones for that allow you to just immediately drop the call. No voice mail, no "silent notice", just let them sent their crap to /dev/null and give them nothing to waste my time.
These are very easy to illustrate to the law makers. It costs almost nothing to incessantly call the phone numbers of the most influential lawmakers. All someone has to do is do it for a week and we would get a new law against it. Wonder why no one did it till now.
There are so many robocalls, typically for scams, that our phones have been effectively stolen from us. We can often no longer practically use them for their intended purpose.
It’s funny, I remember when the iPhone was announced Steve Jobs said “the killer app is making calls!” and then proceeded to show (correctly at the time) how hard making calls with phones was, and how much better it was going to be.
And now? I literally don’t use this feature.
I turn on Do Not Disturb and “block unknown callers”, and turn on emergency-mode for anyone I actually care about, and receive no other rings on my phone. At this point, I refuse to spend even a moment considering any call that does not leave a voice mail.
I use Google Fi and I wonder if these changes are responsible for my recent problems with caller ID when I call somebody. My phone number is 512-xxx-yyyy and when I call anybody in Canada and some US phones I've been told my number shows up as +51-2xx-xyy-yy or just as unidentified caller.
When I text my daughter, my incoming texts show up under that number but she can't reply on that number. It's very frustrating.
That is weird, it's ringing as an international number. +1-512-xxx-yyyy is your international number. Seems like it's making it an international call, but not actually using the country code.
This is incredibly solvable, and it costs me $2 per month. I use a VOIP provider and give out that phone number. I ban all incoming calls from numbers not in my phonebook.
The phone number plays an IVR - and you can leave a voicemail which is e-mailed to me. If you're someone I know (friend, bank) you have my extension - unlisted in the IVR, and you can enter it.
I've received zero unwanted calls in the 2 years I've been doing this.
I wish there was a way to stop this bs. Robocall numbers used to be easily identifiable. Nowadays, robocalls shows up as a random-similar number of a third party person, which is never repeatedly dialed, so even blocking the number won't stop calls from coming it (as it'd just dial from a different similar number...)
I got in trouble for not answering my phone when HR was trying to call, because the number was unknown and I get about a dozen spam calls every single day. It's ridiculous, my actual work productivity greatly suffered due to the spam flying in daily.
my dad (80 YO) has a PhD in computer science and has been scammed multiple times.
I have had multiple employees buy about 7K in gift cards for scammers.
I personally bought a $200 electric surfboard that ended up being a $20 boogie board (facebook ad). I immediately realized it was a scam but paypal wouldnt let me cancel the transaction. They said I had to receive the item first. Then when I received the item the refund link wouldnt work (errored out). I ended up just giving up and eating the $200.
A retired friend had all bank accounts and investment accounts drained (millions). Im not sure how this happened, but 2FA is a must for big accounts.
Try nomorobo.com - free for Voip numbers, $20/year for
mobile. Not 100% perfect, more like 95%, but it will
suffice until the FCC improves the situation ... soon.
Other similar services exist, and would likely be as effective.
Buy a number on Twilio and forward it to your cell. It’s $1/month for the number and if you don’t get many calls it’ll be pennies a month to get calls.
Plus, you can setup a greeting and have an AI speak to your callers. Basically vanishes all robocalls.
Here in India, the telecom authority (TRAI) has prescribed various measures to curb unwanted calls and messages[1], with mixed success. They also have an app released[2], which essentially uses a template to send SMS to the number denoted for complaining about spam.
After a lot of action for around nine months, I got junk SMS and spam calls (both automated and otherwise) to a bare minimum. It did take some time and there were a lot of frustrations along the way, but was completely worth it.
Some good practices I figured from all this:
1. For spam calls where there is an actual human speaking to you, try and get them to reveal the name and location of their call center. Most of the time, the culprits are the same for different types of calls. Requesting to speak to their manager and having a friendly chat about the TRAI penalty system helped a lot in reducing the calls. Having a log of when they had called you in the past is also helpful; at least it conveys that you aren't some buffoon shouting at the clouds.
2. For SMS spam where the sender is a bunch of letters (eg. ZZ-ABCDEF), iPhone isn't able to add that contact to the block list. Using T9 to figure out those numbers and adding them[3] to the blocklist that way works. This is mostly for your telecom service provider who feels free to send you spam with no way for you to complain to TRAI, because you're using their service, and they don't care about do-not-disturb for such cases.
3. Naming and shaming on Twitter and email helps, especially for companies depending on their brand name. Funded startups in particular are abusers of spam calling and SMSes, but are also fearful of complaints on social media going viral.
4. This might be anecdotal, but I found I actually received fewer spam calls after removing my number from TrueCaller[4]. Ironically the service is used to figure out who's calling you, but I found that I don't need it at all, and not having my number in there has somehow proved beneficial.
5. Certain mobile service providers are more serious about acting on spam complaints than others. If you find that your provider is not heeding complaints about spam, definitely switch to another service if possible.
6. Some services do provide a DNC (Do Not Call) registry on their website. Do use those and keep a record of you having added your name to it.
When I was in Japan, I had an account with DOCOMO (local cellphone service). I used the number frequently delivery services, bank services, hotels, etc. I never received a single unwanted phone call.
I return to USA I get new cellphone service and same day I get dozens of unwanted calls and immediately have to block all numbers not in my contact list.
Since the problem of unwanted calls doesn't exist in some countries, I have to assume that it is a solvable problem. Countries where it is a problem simply don't wish to solve it. I suspect it is simply some countries favoring corporations over individuals.
I had't had one in 12 months in the UK. It's time to renew my car insurance and I entered my number for a quote into one of the major providers websites, and I've had 3 in the last week. I hate to make assumptions, but it's just too coincidental.
I received four separate calls that “my social security number has been suspended for illegal activity” calls yesterday. Those scammers have been able to walk away with multiple tens of thousands of dollars from unsuspecting (mostly older) Americans- draining significant portions of their life savings. Add in the other three calls offering to “lower my interest rate” and a few more offering Medicare advantage plans, and...
It’s a scourage and the only reason this continues to be a problem is because of lax enforcement. It was trivial to track down and punish - even as a private individual under the TCPA - robocallers when they resided in the US. Now since all this activity is overseas, they operate with impunity and it’s disgusting.
I received four separate calls that “my social security number has been suspended for illegal activity” calls yesterday.
The hammer just came down on the telco responsible.[1] That particular scam is on the list attached to the FCC's letter. Under the new administration, the FCC isn't fooling around. Here's what the FCC actually sent that telco:
Federal Communications Commission
Enforcement Bureau
VIA CERTIFIED MAIL - RETURN RECEIPT REQUESTED
To: Omar Luna CEO
R Squared Telecom LLC
526 S Main St. Suite 802 Akron, OH 44311
omar.luna@rsquaredtelecom.com
Re: Official Correspondence from the Federal Communications Commission
Dear Mr. Luna,
We have determined that R Squared Telecom LLC (R Squared) is apparently transmitting illegal robocall traffic on behalf of one or more of its clients. You should investigate and, if necessary, cease transmitting such traffic immediately and take steps to prevent your network from continuing to be a source of apparently illegal robocalls. As noted below, downstream voice service providers will be authorized to block all of R Squared’s traffic if you do not take steps to “effectively mitigate illegal traffic” within 48 hours, or if you fail to inform the Commission and the Traceback Consortium within fourteen (14) days of this letter (April 27, 2021) of the steps you have taken to “implement effective measures” to prevent customers from using your network to make illegal calls.
In the original, "block all of R Squared’s traffic" is bolded.
Yes, the FCC gave an entire wholesale telco 48 hours to stop robocalls or be cut off from the phone network. The FCC didn't bother to censor their CEO's name and email address, either.
That's after the US$225 million dollar fine the FCC levied on another robocall firm last month.[2]
The "Traceback Consortium" is the group putting source authentication into VOIP. Congress required that to be in place by June 30, 2021, and much of it is already working. So finding out who's doing it is now beginning to work. As we can see here.
I lost quite a lot of productivity every day because I forget to put my phone on DND; I inevitably get some random robocall during a remote meeting which messes up my my bluetooth audio.
This wastes not only my time, but often a bit of time from whoever else is on the call from me missing important information.
Not to mention those robocallers are scammers, draining the bank accounts of vulnerable people. They don't care that their tactics involve frightening people and it doesn't bother them when they hear the people crying over the needed money they've lost.
In addition to phones being made useless by the volume of spam, the scourge of mail dressed up to look official when it isn't also could use addressing.
I recently bought a car for the first time in quite a while, and have been inundated with scumbags sending me official-looking doom letters about how my warranty is about to expire and it's vital I call their expensive phone number to pay them money immediately. Similarly, mail often arrives from the "loan disbursement centre" which are dressed up to look like official notifications but in fact are offers of awful credit lines.
At least the phone issue is usually easily solved by setting the phone only to ring for those already in a contact lists, spoofing not-withstanding.
> I recently bought a car for the first time in quite a while
ugh and they only get information about the loan's origination, so it all keeps going even if you pay the loan off early. my wife bought a car, had troubles, long long story, got a replacement but technically a separate loan. now she gets junk for both cars.
they also dig up home mortgages for their junkmail, too.
huh. i don't get anything about my ~23 year old vehicle that was bought outright. guess they figure there's no plausible junk mail i could be sent about it?
I see a few answers here touting the use of a fee and I couldn't help but ask for feedback on my in-production solution with a few thousand users. It uses a refundable $0.05 fee, which is refunded if a call lasts more than 25 seconds. [1]
A business model we're pursuing is to let legitimate callers pay willing recipients $/min according to the recipients predetermined rate. [2] I'd love more users/feedback/customers. iOS is in the works for Summer 2021.
I’d say 95% of the calls I receive are spam. It’s so bad that I rarely even answer my phone anymore, instead letting it go to voicemail if the number is not in my contacts.
Everything in life has turned to spam. My physical mailbox, my email, and my phone is bombarded by spam and there’s practically nothing I can do about it.