Almost Half of US Cellphone Calls Will Be Scams By Next Year, Says Report (cnet.com) 278
According to a new report from First Orion, nearly half of the mobile phone calls received in the U.S. next year will be scams. "The percentage of scam calls in U.S. mobile traffic increased from 3.7 percent last year to 29.2 percent this year, and it's predicted to rise to 44.6 percent in 2019, First Orion said in a press release Wednesday," reports CNET. From the report: The most popular method scammers use to try to get people to pick up the phone is called "neighborhood spoofing," where they disguise their numbers with a local prefix so people presume the calls are safe to pick up, First Onion said. Third-party call blocking apps may help protect consumers from known scam numbers, but they can't tell if a scammer hijacks someone's number and uses it for scam calls. "Scammers relentlessly inundate mobile phones with increasingly convincing and scary calls," said Gavin Macomber, senior vice president of marketing at First Orion, in an email statement. "Solving a problem of this magnitude requires a comprehensive, in-network carrier solution that dives deeper than third-party applications ever could by detecting and eliminating unwanted and malicious calls before they reach your phone."
Easy to fix (Score:5, Insightful)
But carriers don't feel like doing it.
Re:Easy to fix (Score:5, Insightful)
indeed, they'd rather knowingly sell blocks of numbers to the same Indian scammers they sold another block a month before.
Yes, India. India is the major source of this problem. I'm in favor of cutting trade and business with them until they clean up their act.
All of 'em (Score:5, Interesting)
All of my cellphone calls are unsolicited and unwanted.
Because anyone who actually knows me knows I don't answer phone calls. My default ringtone is silence. I have actual make-a-noise ringtones for a couple of family members in case of emergency, but (thankfully) no one's tried to call me for an emergency in the last ten years or so. And the fam+friends know better than to make that thing ring for anything else; I'll just bite their head off. :)
AFAIC, The phone system's been outright ruined by spammers. And so far, unlike email, there's no phone call spam filter worth the name.
Text me or email me, otherwise, you go your way, I'll go mine.
Re: (Score:2)
All of my cellphone calls are unsolicited and unwanted.
Lucky you. I run a service company that's dependent on customer calls to my cellphone, and I have a landline that's often forwarded to my cellie 'cause I like to talk to the customers my own damn self... control issues acknowledged.
All my regular customers are saved in the phone and their calls come in immediately identified. Local number scam spoofers suck, but operating as essentially a closed practice requiring referral, if you ain't in the phone already, you're going to have to leave a convincing messa
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I will use the phone for actual voice conversations. However the amount of robocalls and advertising has trained me to not accept any call if I don't know the number. I have refused to answer the phone for someone who turned out to be a coworker for intance. My reasoning is that if the call is important they will leave a voice mail. But then most of the voice mail is just too, but at least I can filter it out at a preferred time instead of on demand. Not everyone I want to contact me can text me.
I'm re
Re:All of 'em (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh hey, look, it's you, AC (Score:4, Interesting)
Within my remarks is a potential 0-spam, 0-coldcall, 0-dunning, 0-buttdialer, 0-random-idiot solution for those adept enough to grasp it.
It's quite possible that group may not include you.
I'm okay with that. In fact, your "who cares" is exactly how I feel you. Isn't that curious?
Cheers. :)
Re:Easy to fix (Score:4, Insightful)
A big part of the problem is dumb incompetent spammers. When I get a spam call, I press "1" to get a human, and then I say just enough to hook them into thinking I am a mark. They I ask them to wait on hold while I go get my credit card. After a few minutes, I check the line, and if they are still waiting, I give them fake CC numbers until they give up in frustration. It is especially gratifying when they start spewing profanity at me. I love that.
But here's the thing: THEY KEEP CALLING BACK. The SAME company will call back day after day with the same stupid line about the IRS, or Microsoft anti-virus warnings, or "Rachel at cardholder services". Why don't they flag people like me, and stop wasting their time? It makes no sense.
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More and more of the robodialers are using computers to do it all. You're not talking to a person, you're talking to an AI system that uses voice recognition to carry out a basic conversation. Make sure you're doing a Turing test. Your ability to waste a human's time is rapidly going away.
And as far as calling back multiple times: the reason is, though you didn't fall for whatever they were pitching, perhaps the next person to answer will...your wife, your elderly mother, your daughter, etc. Keep throwing i
Re:Easy to fix (Score:5, Informative)
They don't have to buy blocks of numbers. Just spoof caller ID. It's illegal to do with numbers you don't own, but they're not bothered by that.
Fight Fire with Fire (Score:5, Insightful)
I used to get a lot of calls from India. At first I just told them to fuck off but the calls kept coming. Then I tried spending time winding them up but that always seemed like a waste of my own time. The thing is, I spent more than a decade studying psychology so it eventually occurred to me to use that. The question was not how to tell them to fuck off but how to get them to decide to fuck off for themselves. India is heavily honour and family oriented. This is a rough transcript of the last call that I answered, now many years ago: ... [strangled voice] ...no... [line disconnects]
Me: Hello?
Scammer: This is John from Microsoft, you computer has a virus.
Me: Have you told your parents that your job is trying to steal money from people like them in another country?
Scammer: [5 seconds of silence]
The number of scam calls dropped hugely. I like to hope that at least one Indian decided to move on to an honest job instead.
Re: (Score:2)
Me: Hello? Scammer: This is John from Microsoft, you computer has a virus. Me: Have you told your parents that your job is trying to steal money from people like them in another country? Scammer: [5 seconds of silence] ... [strangled voice] ...no... [line disconnects]
I tried that the last* time I got a similar call - with exactly the same result.
*Dumped the landline just after, haven't had any since.
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My mother has fallen for these scams 4 times. I feel that if I ever intercept such a call that I will be too furious to do more than shout rather than being logical about it.
Re:Fight Fire with Fire (Score:4, Interesting)
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I get a call twice a week circa noon in Mandarin. What I have read is it is a threat that I need to make good on a bogus debt or they will turn me in to ICE>
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There is a Mandarin phone scam going around where the call claims to be coming from the Chinese consulate.
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How ?
Re:Easy to fix (Score:4, Interesting)
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When I lived in South America (years ago), there were extra costs to call a cell phone from a land line. Not sure it would be a good idea, but the only reason telemarketing works is because the economics are there to support it. Want to stop it, change one of the inputs in the equation.
Interesting thought. Maybe there could be a minimal credit/cost that the target of a call would receive, that would be refunded if the call was accepted.
Re:Easy to fix (Score:5, Informative)
How ?
Calling party pays [wikipedia.org].
This is the way most of the world does it. Spam calls are mostly an American phenomenon.
Other countries have the "one ring scam", where the caller rings once and then hangs up, hoping a foolish person will be curious and call back. But most people do NOT call back, and the call can be traced since you have to disclose your real call back number. Also, phones in some countries have a feature where the second ring is the first audible ring.
Another reform would be to restrict spoofing. You should only be allowed to spoof if you own both numbers. This is another "American problem".
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Calling party pays [wikipedia.org].
This is the way most of the world does it. Spam calls are mostly an American phenomenon.
That might work, but I doubt that it would be popular. If you remember that's the way we used to do things here. Not only was it calling party pays but also LMS service.
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We don't have calling party pays in the US? I know that in the past the recipient paid but that has changed because it stopped people from buying mobile phone. I know land lines are all caller-pays, and many scams come over them.
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I can't even think of the last time I saw a calling plan that charged per call on either residential or business service.
The last time I did that I was leasing a channelized T1 that had a class C network block on it. Was able to pay for itself by hosting people on it.
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Oh ya, sorry, I was mentally lumping in land lines as well.
Re:Easy to fix (Score:5, Interesting)
Calling party pays (and unlimited minutes) frees the spammer from any liability for spamming. They're paying for everything, the recipient pays nothing. So the recipient has no legal nor financial recourse to request a reduction in spam. This is why your mailbox is full of junk mail. Because the junk mail senders are paying for everything, and in fact are subsidizing first class postage.
Spoofing numbers you don't own (as part of spam or a scam) is already illegal [fcc.gov]. The problem is (1) there's no way for the recipient to figure out who the actual caller from a spoofed number is, so they don't know who to sue or even complain about. And (2) as with junk mail, the spammers make up a significant fraction of phone company revenue, so the phone companies don't want to fix Caller ID to make it impossible to spoof a number they don't own.
With regards to (2), the phone companies are protected by their Common Carrier status, so it's probably going to take a change to phone protocols to prevent spoofing. e.g. Change how VoIP-to-VoIP calls are made so they also send a datagram encrypted with a private key owned by the caller. The receiving VoIP device looks up the Caller ID number in a public database to find that number's public key, and uses that key to decrypt the datagram. If the decryption fails, then it knows the caller doesn't have the proper private key for that Caller ID number, meaning the number has been spoofed, and drops the call. If the decryption is successful, then it knows the Caller ID info is accurate and allows the call to ring through.
Trivial to fix (Score:3)
Its the fuckers running things. They don't give a shit about
Re:Easy to fix (Score:5, Interesting)
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Disallowing caller ID spoofing would be a great start. Simply do not allow displaying any phone number not assigned to you. They DO know who is actually calling, since they wouldn't complete the call if they couldn't bill for it.
The spammers would have to get a line in every area code they call in order to pull the "local call" trick if the phone companies did that. They'd also have to get a new line every campaign since you could just block the spam numbers.
Most of the spam/scam calls count on very low cos
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Disallowing caller ID spoofing would be a great start. Simply do not allow displaying any phone number not assigned to you. They DO know who is actually calling, since they wouldn't complete the call if they couldn't bill for it.
Not so easy, especially since the network is now heterogenous. What is the phone number of someone calling from a VOIP exchange ?
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The number on the account that gets the bill. The one they have to authenticate in order to call out.
As long as the telcos bill for services it's not at all hard, because you can bet no call goes anywhere if they don't know who to bill for it.
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The number on the account that gets the bill. The one they have to authenticate in order to call out.
As long as the telcos bill for services it's not at all hard, because you can bet no call goes anywhere if they don't know who to bill for it.
Well that only works is if they are back matching the call metadata to an actual call.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Orangeboxing was around since before ESS5 came online.
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The VOIP eventually has to be tied to an actual phone line, and that's where the number comes from, even if it's an internal exchange number of the phone company. Caller ID should be changed so that it can directly say if this is VOIP, or from the phone company itself, and so forth. I got a advertising sales call today from my own phone company that I mistakenly though was from my dentist because of number similarity.
I'm annoyed that robocalls and the like can't be banned anymore. There was one year when
Re: (Score:2)
The VOIP eventually has to be tied to an actual phone line, and that's where the number comes from, even if it's an internal exchange number of the phone company. Caller ID should be changed so that it can directly say if this is VOIP, or from the phone company itself, and so forth. I got a advertising sales call today from my own phone company that I mistakenly though was from my dentist because of number similarity.
Sorry that's a no. If you have exchange level switches you can place whatever number you want on outgoing call. It's been awhile about 20 years since I was cutting edge on this so I went to the trouble of double checking
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
There's just virtually no validation.
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Mandatory death penalty if convicted of wire fraud involving a senior citizen. Including full extradition of foreign nationals who commit this crime. That will slow scamming down a whole lot, and get politicians the senior vote.
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Actually, it would be a killer feature. "Choose Versprint&T Mobile and avoid those unwanted calls"
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tmobile has had some of this for a while, but could definitely be better.
I hadn't remembered creating a "scam likely" designation (although it's the kind of label I'd tend to create) when it first came up on our phones, and I later found out that it was tmobile doing that.
Now if they'd only scan my texts for a speciic name in the first three words, and auto-block . . . I assume they're from something the prior owner of my number fell for . . .
hawk
Authenticated/unauthenticated caller id flag (Score:2)
Three alternatives (lacking a deep technical knowledge of the implementation issues)
--Calls from carriers that are only willing to pass authenticated caller id could be flagged as "authenticated". Calls passed thru carriers who don't authenticated would show up as "possible scam". This would make the calls more obvious.
--Along with caller ID pass along the originating carrier (or perhaps the last identified carrier). I'd be a lot less likely to answer a call for a carrier I didn't recognize than one I did.
Re: (Score:2)
The ANI number is the billing number for the originating carrier. The ANI number might match the caller ID, but not for most scammers. There are a lot of ways to spoof caller ID (it's about like "from" email addresses before DKIM/SPF) and still a lot of legitimate reasons to allow it.
Authenticating caller ID would require cooperation between every carrier and CLEC in existence but could probably happen. Unauthenticated callers could come in with no caller ID or just be flagged as potential junk. It's ha
Re:Authenticated/unauthenticated caller id flag (Score:4, Interesting)
Carriers in the U.S. could be forced to cooperate by the FCC. For calls from countries that don't play ball, force the caller ID to display the country of origin.
There are few if any reasons to allow a caller to spoof a number that they don't actually own. Those few could be handled by a call relay or at least a signed legal document accepting responsibility for the spoofed calls.
Re: Easy to fix (Score:5, Interesting)
Extremely easy.
1. Set default ringtone to a single "ding" (as used to announce an SMS or email arrival)
2. Set ringtone for everyone in your contacts list to "old telephone"
3. When phone "dings", check number, answer if it looks like one you were expecting, otherwise easy to ignore
4. Folks in your contacts list will cause phone to ring normally.
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I want automatic Do Not Disturb mode for all numbers not in my contacts list. I can turn it off if I'm expecting a call.
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So half scams and half spam then?
It's not that hard (Score:2)
Just fucking block calls coming out of Pakistan and Eastern Europe that don't have regionally appropriate phone numbers on them.
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it's not that simple, they spoof their number so that it looks like it came from your region. For example, if my number was 1-555-444-3333 they'll spoof the incoming number as 1-555-444-2324 because people are more likely to assume it's a local number.
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And they get blocked because the country code doesn't match.
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often, though, they're so sloppy that they get the number of digits wrong . . . I laugh, but am occasionally tempted to answer those.
hawk
Re: It's not that hard (Score:2)
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The calls are terminating via US carriers. It's just a VoIP trunk going overseas from there and there's no way to know where the actual microphone and speaker are.
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The VoIP trunk doesn't own the numbers, but they don't have to. I can own a number on one service and legally spoof it on another.
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We don't have to allow that, at least not without a document signed in blood.
When the scammers spoof, they spoof other people's numbers, who I doubt would be willing to sign a document permitting it.
In at least one case, apple scammers spoofed the number of an actual Apple Store to sell their fraud. Surely that shouldn't be permitted.
Good (Score:5, Informative)
I'm glad, it hope it gets worst. I'd say 90% of incoming phone calls I get are scams or telemarketing calls. The worst it gets the more likely the carriers will do something about it. Until then, I'll continue to set my blocking app automatically hang up if they're not in my contact list. I'd be even happier if i could send them to the Jolly Roger phone company with a simple button press.
Re:Good (Score:4, Interesting)
>"Until then, I'll continue to set my blocking app automatically hang up if they're not in my contact list."
Care to share the love with info on what you did/use? First, I didn't think any app could have that permission, so I think it would require root, which rules out use by most people.
But it sounds like you have something similar to what I want (which is doable on a land line, but apparently not on cellular). I don't want a "service" from some third party. Ideally I would like something, non-root, that would silently answer calls from anyone NOT in my contact list and challenge the caller with a simple math problem or something like that. If they fail, it hangs up WITH NO VOICEMAIL OPTION, perhaps with a warning to remove my number from their list. But it still logs the call event WITH NO NOTIFICATION. If they pass, it rings through as normal.
The problem right now is that stock Android is EXTREMELY weak when it comes to anti-call-spam. And almost any option you try, still gives them freaking voicemail options, which are just as annoying as a call, if not more-so, because you still get annoyed by a notification, have to go find the stupid voicemail app, wait for it to load and download the audio, listen to it, then delete it, every time.
I would even be partially happy if I could just have the option to not allow voicemail for dismissed calls. So frustrating.
Re:Good (Score:4, Informative)
I use an app called "Should I Answer". In there it has an option to block any caller not in my contact list. If it's a known scammer it does nothing. If it's not sure then it will forward to voicemail. For voicemail I've got it set to forward to my google voice number. I then get a notification from the google voice app that I have a voicemail which was kindly transcribed and probably sold to marketers or used in AI training.
Before that I used an app called Mr. Number but they removed that feature so I removed their app.
Re:Good (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
>"I use Advanced Call Blocker."
Unfortunately, I can't find that in Play Store :(
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Reply to self. I did some more research and decided to at least try SOMETHING. After reading and reading, I ended up installing this:
https://play.google.com/store/... [google.com]
Calls Blacklist - Call Blocker by Vlad Lee
10,000,000+ installs, very high rating, lots of positive reviews and articles. But it has some annoyances, like asking to be the default dialer/phone app EVERY TIME you look in the log (since I don't want it to have that ability). But the powerful feature is there is a single click in settings tha
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>"It looks like they have an app for Android too."
They do, but it is rated 2 stars with endless complaints and issues. Plus it is a paid "service" (which I would never do). But thanks for sharing the info.
At least it's still illegal to spam cellphones (Score:2)
On our landline, we get an average of one non-spam call per week.
Thats Funny... (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
>"You still have a land line."
I do too. During the last hurricane, all the cell towers failed, but land lines were fine. And I have land phones throughout the house that just work, and with good clarity. And I have a system that is wireless and also links to my cell phone, too. Panasonic I know I always have a reliable way to call 911- either land or cell. I would much rather "talk" on my wireless land line with HUGE battery life and easy to hold handset... often with a wired headset plugged into it
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Serious question. How often do poeple call 911? Or is it just a fear of needing it? I am 40 and have never called 911 for an emergency at my house as an adult or child. Am I just an outlier?
I just dont feel like it is warranted for almost 500/year.
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Be thankful you don't have CenturyLink, where you can request a limited low-cost Landline plan, but they plain ignore your order change and just continue on with the high cost plan you wanted out of.
I don't owe money to CenturyLink any longer for service I didn't use at all for several months before they finally stopped pretending I had ordered it. I 'owe' money to some collection agency they sold my
'debt' to.
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You still have a land line.
I do -- 911 is faster and way more accurate over a landline (cell phones use GPS, which I have switched off by default to save battery power).
In addition, if you have (young) children, you should have a landline at your home - for the above reason and so *they* can easily call 911 in an emergency.
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I do have young kids and they know how to use the mobile phones in the house.
Which is great as long as there's a mobile phone in the house ... Just sayin'.
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Agreed, 911 calls need to know where you are if you can't easily communicate for some reason (having a heart attack). With all the tracking and advertising going on I am not going to leave GPS on and invite trouble.
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You still have a land line.
It's not a traditional landline, but the kind served through our cable modem, that we get included in our cable package. I have always wanted to just unplug the damn thing, but my wife is reluctant to use her cell for incoming calls because she doesn't like carrying it close to her all the time (If only women had pockets!)
Re:At least it's still illegal to spam cellphones (Score:4, Insightful)
>"At least it's still illegal to spam cellphones"
Except it is apparently civil and not criminal. So nobody cares and they go right ahead and spam. Same thing with junk faxes- which are also illegal, and yet only civil. As if someone is going to find and pay a private detective to find out who REALLY faxed, then find and pay a lawyer to maybe find and sue that party, then have to take time off work to do all that and to go to court, to MAYBE get a few dollars or something. It is a total joke.
Unless it is criminal and actually enforced, nothing will change. We need a system where if you get a spam call on ANY line, you hang up, then dial a simple code, and it automatically reports them to the FCC/FTC/whatever, real-time, and they actually DO something about it when it is confirmed by a second report from someone else. But don't hold your breath, that will never happen.
The best we can ACTUALLY hope for, MAYBE, is to close ALL the loopholes that allow people to fake or hide their actual phone numbers and where calls are coming from. At least then, some filtering and blocking techniques might have a chance.
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I've got one too. I've been on the fence about canceling, but I got an advertising call from my phone company today so I will cancel this weekend and give a good reason when they ask why I'm leaving.
New tactic (Score:2)
I pick up the phone and say I'll call them right back...
You can't generally call back scammers, the numbers are pretty much always forged.
That's of course the calls that make it past the robocall blocker...
Why answer calls from an unfamiliar number? (Score:2)
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>"I don't answer calls from numbers I don't recognize. If it's important they'll leave a voicemail. "
Not a solution at all.
Spammers leave voicemail all the time, either intentionally or not... especially when it is those damn robocalls.
And then you have an annoying notification.
Then you have to open and wait for the voicemail app.
Then find the message and select it.
Then wait for it to download the audio.
Then listen to it, yep, F'ing spam.
Then you have to delete it.
Then you might want to delete it from yo
Re: (Score:2)
Spammers leave voice mail, but not very often in my experience. I may get 5 to 10 calls a day that I don't answer but I haven't gotten a voice mail in at least a month.
I have however gotten a call from an unknown number that was actually very important. It did have the twon prefix for my mother so I did answer instead of ignoring it. I have also needed to use someone else's phone for an emergency call so I was glad that the other end answered.
All your cash is belong to Telco protection sales (Score:2)
We can fix this by making you pay more for what we should have been required to do in the first place.
What? You thought we were in business to sell telephone calls? Young people don't call their parents anymore, even when we push weepy ads they block that show happy families calling grandma.
Oh, and your landline prices will go up too.
What scam? (Score:2)
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Let's see, there's the lower your credit card interest, student loan forgiveness, the "IRS" pay or be arrested, the "Attorney General" calling about a video tape you didn't return, pay or be arrested (no, I'm NOT kidding, I have gotten that one several times), a bazillion "charities" that sound close to ones you've actually heard of. Then there's "Microsoft" calling because they detected a virus on your computer, "Apple" calling for the same reason, etc.
Even fake collection agencies (or perhaps real ones us
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Microsoft support scam is common. You get that just after your computer pops up a virus warning. Then the call says "Hello, we're from Microsoft and just detected a virus on your computer." And the scam actually works.
Time for PKI in Caller ID and network connections (Score:5, Insightful)
Now that VoIP and packet-switched networks have replaced circuit-switch voice band twisted pair landlines, we still lack a way to enable secure authentication to a trusted root of who is actually calling. The FCC is supposedly looking into solutions, but implementing PKI in the network can prevent these calls from ever getting to people. Many of these scams are on VoIP gateways that have default passwords.
Normally I'm against a lot of government involvement in people's lives, but this is one place where it's required. If Congress could pass the CALM act to end annoying loudness changes in broadcast TV, the passing of which had little economic consequence, then Congress can definitely get their act together and pass a law to do the same for authenticating phone calls using PKI and removing security holes. Inaction in this area already has a tremendous negative economic consequences, particularly for the elderly and other vulnerable individuals who are defrauded systematically and who are typically more reliant on phone services due to their ease of use and familiarity.
The real tell in all of this will be what the carriers do when this is enacted. I suspect there will be tremendous resistance spearheaded by the argument that it will require equipment replacement. I'm not sure that's the case given that the magic is in firmware, but more on the system engineering side. In that case, let them put a deadline down to get their act together. Where there's a will (and a law), there's a way.
Google Voice (Score:2)
Google Voice is one of the main gateways being abused. They use Google Voice to get a number in a specific region, then robocall people in that area from that number.
Also, for me, at least 95% of calls to my cell are telemarketers. They are using some middleman robocalling system that initiates the call via Google Voice then does some filtering, requiring the person being called to interact in some way and confirm. Then that middleman service calls the actual telemarketer. The telemarketer, legally speakin
This boggles my mind (Score:3)
> The most popular method scammers use to try to get people to pick up the phone is called "neighborhood spoofing," where they disguise their numbers with a local prefix
The originating phone company must by definition know what line or cellphone the call is actually being made from. It boggles my mind why phone companies even (continue to) provide this functionality in the first place. I very much hope that it becomes illegal soon.
Chinese (Score:2)
My landlord and some database has connected my phone number with my address so about once a month I get a chinese recording. Makes it easier to hang up on them.
Also, I love the "Car insurance renewal" scam calls I get. I always feel tempted to ask what kind of car they want to give me before I buy insurance on it.
Why? Because it works. (Score:5, Insightful)
We all get these stupid calls. Indian-based Microsoft support proactively finding a problem on your computer and they have the solution. We heard you suffer from chronic pain, we have things that will help. You've been selected for a free trip to Disneyworld. There's a solution for your creditcard debt. Refinance your student loans to get a lock-in before DeVoss ends the program.
It is all bullshit. We know that.
So why do they keep coming?
Because they freaking work. You get one moron that only goes online once a week on their 56k dialup line at home to check the facebook, they're more than willing to whip out their credit card to take advantage of such a limited time, exclusive offer.
It's that one moron that ruins it for us all. The scammers then make money, the carriers make money, etc., so they are incentivized to call the rest of us looking for more idiots.
Robos (Score:3)
Unless I am expecting a call from a mechanic or something, I haven't picked up a phone number that doesn't give caller ID in a year (to say nothing of "unknown" numbers.)
Enforce Do Not Call (Score:2)
Happens multiple times a day (Score:2)
Simple fix for that (Score:4, Informative)
I've got an App called Call Blocker on my phone (android). If anyone calls me and they are not in my address book it goes straight to voicemail. Most of the time, of course, there is no voicemail because the robocall hangs up. If it does happen to be something important the person can leave a message and I'll call them back. The beauty of it is that the phone doesn't even ring.
I gave up on trying to block numbers because it just seemed like a game of whack-a-mole. The scammers would call from a different number next time.
Works for me and it's free.
NO caller ID spofing (Score:2)
Force the telcos to not allow callerID spoofing of any kind. It's gooten out of hand
In theory, it allows a company to have a representative call you, but their phone number is spoofed to give the general contact number instead of that person's desk. It made sense back then, but almost every single callerID spoofed number is a scam.
Just stop allowing callerID spoofing. We don't need it as much as we need relief.
The law requires that people be able to use callerID blocking,
So businesses that do not want you t
Credit card scams (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I've received calls from security sections of a couple of different credit card companies.
In one case, their data had been compromised and they were overnighting me a replacement card with a new number, and a couple questioning the transaction of the moment to confirm.
hawk
Orange Tide had it right in the FP (Score:2)
My crazy solution (Score:2)
I have a Googod Voice number in an area code where I know no one. All calls from that area code are junk.
Let the caler pay, like in the rest of the world. (Score:2)
hello USA, rest of the world here: we don't have this massive scam call problem, because here it is always the caller to pay.
Frankly, this is a Planet USA peculiarity. I am sure you guys can't, for the most part, imagine how it could even be possible to be otherwise than in the USA, but it can.
Re: (Score:2)
It's more than profit. Let's say you're a major corporation calling someone about an overdue mortgage payment. Do you really want the outgoing caller ID to be a random line in their phone bank or their toll-free number? That random line might be busy when you call back, but the main number will find an open line.
I use caller ID spoofing when I see my VoIP provider's outgoing caller ID to match my Google Voice number - it ensures that a returned call gets me anywhere.
Re: (Score:2)
That can be permitted since they own both the outgoing line and the incoming toll free line.
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$1.14 would be worth it to not get all the scam calls.
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Or whistle the SIT tone to convince their system that you're number is no longer in service.
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"Press one for our legal department. Press two for our enforcement division. Press three for the anti-fraud division. Press four if you're not paying attention. Press five to hear these choices again in a random language."
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My Google Voice number requires caller ID spoofing and I'm not ready to give it up yet. Otherwise incoming calls to my cell will show my own GV number instead of spoofed to match the original caller's number.
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