A New Senate Bill Would Hit Robocallers With Up To a $10,000 Fine For Every Call (gizmodo.com) 180
Massachusetts Democratic Senator Ed Markey and South Dakota Republican Senator John Thune have introduced a bill on Friday that aims to ramp up the penalties on illegal robocalls and stop scammers from sending them. Gizmodo reports: The Telephone Robocall Abuse Criminal Enforcement and Deterrence (TRACED) Act, raises the penalty for robocalls from $1,500 per call to up to $10,000 per call, and allows the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to take action on illegal robocalls up to three years after the calls are placed, instead of a year. The Act also aims to push the FCC to work along with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Department of Justice, Department of Homeland Security, Federal Trade Commission (FTC), and other agencies to provide information to Congress about advancements in hindering robocall and prosecuting scammers. Perhaps most importantly for us highly annoyed Americans, the bill would also force phone service providers to use call authentication that filters out illegitimate calls before they go through to consumers.
And nothing will change (Score:5, Insightful)
... wake me up when they charge the telcos for every robocall they don't filter. That will make a change.
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... wake me up when they charge the telcos for every robocall they don't filter. That will make a change.
Yes, and then they can charge the upstream provider.
Make them pay dearly for not putting in basic validation of sender at every stage and not doing any reasonable filtering.
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Make them pay dearly for not putting in basic validation of sender at every stage and not doing any reasonable filtering.
You want to make the phone companies pay dearly? Where do you think their money comes from?
You're an idiot.
Re: And nothing will change (Score:2)
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what do you mean? more expenses, higher prices passed on to customers. wonderful, now you're paying for service AND for the robocalls...
Re: And nothing will change (Score:5, Interesting)
Really, we should just get rid of the telephone system. Put it on open protocols for audio/video/data, run it over the internet. End to end encrypted. That old shit has got to go. Plus, I don't want to pay for a phone plan when an iPhone and a data plan will do.
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Surely that's because higher income homes are almost certainly more likely to have high-speed internet, and a landline is required for DSL, which constitutes a pretty large percentage of highspeed internet? I have a landline at my house now, but I don't know the phone number, and there's no phone plugged in. It
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Anecdote:
I tried to get my MIL to use a cellphone because the nursing home made it very difficult for her to get a landline. She could sometimes use a flip style phone but was unable to use a touchscreen phone. Eventually, I gave up and bought a home wireless phone that tethered to a cell via bluetooth. This gave her a form factor she was
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Yeah.. Rid of the phone system... Because you don't use it, you don't think it's used.. You're wrong. There are still a shit ton of landlines still in use
And we're now getting a steadily increasing number of robocalls on our cellphones. This has always been illegal, but if can't be stopped if there is no technology for filtering them.
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And that's only if they have battery backup for the digital line. My DSL modem is plugged into my UPS. Years ago, it was always amusing to be IM'ing people that my power went out - well so long as the UPS lasted that is. Now when the power goes out, the DSL almost always dies too, so I assume the VOIP will also be dead.
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Twilio with openvbx = instant robocall system. We need to fine more than old pots telco's.
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You assume that everyone has a high speed Internet connection that isn't metered and has a reasonable level of quality. Many locations are limited to low speed ADSL connections, and just because YOU may live in an area with a reasonable level of population density and service quality does not mean that everyone does.
Many in Europe don't realize just how big North America is, and how remote some towns are. In Europe, you can get to another COUNTRY in four hours or less. Here in the United States, it ca
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Should we also fine the ISPs for every bot they don't filter? Or maybe just the individual websites?
Re: And nothing will change (Score:1)
Point to point telephone is completely a different thing.
Stop being a jester, troll.
It's the exact same network (Score:2)
The public switched telephone network isn't any more point-to-point than the internet is. In fact, you know why Ethernet cables have telephone style connectors? Any guess what the "switched network" means in "public switched telephone network?". Think that's anything like the network switch you use for internet? It's precisely the same network, that's why it uses the same connectors and equipment. Some newer companies focus on IP traffic, but all the original backbone ISPs were the traditional phone compan
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Blah, blah, blah...
You spit out a whole bunch of technical minutia, all of which is completely irrelevant to actual people.
Since you're too focused on the details to figure it out, here's a hint about he key difference between the two systems: The user interface on the phone network is almost invariably hooked to a fucking ringer which interrupts people and demands a real-time response. The internet is not.
"But the phone goes over the internet N layers down in the protocol!!!"
Shut up.
"But the phone company
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You've never heard your computer or mobile device make a notification sound? And the truth is that you can turn off your ringer just like you turn off your notification sound. It doesn't change the fact that a bot is using up bandwidth that you paid for. Whether it's email spam or a robocall or some trollbot.
Bots is bots and nuisance is nuisance.
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You are a moron, but you are correct in this instance.
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Have a blessed day!
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It's your choice what you put on the receiving end. Don't use something with a ringer if you don't want that or it gives you PTSD.
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A phone without a ringer would be next to useless.
The solution is not to make people retreat from using phones the way they always have. Instead, it's to eliminate bot scammers.
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Our family line has a ringer, but that's after an IVR that asks you to press a key for who you want to talk to. It just so happens to block ALL robodialers from ringing our phone in effect. Like I said. It depends what you put on the receiving end.
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So you're happy with retreating. Most people aren't.
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Retreating? This was a happy accident. Was not the reason for the IVR.
YES YES YES YES Hallelujah, we shall overcome (Score:5, Interesting)
This is going to change things if it happens here's why:
Bounty hunters. If it's really 10K$ per call, I can offer to split my share with a bounty hunter who will track down the Mofo and collect.
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It's a fine, not a bounty. If you got even $10 for reporting robocalls that would do the job. But this is not an attempt to fix the robocall problem, this is a money grab combined with selective enforcement. The government will pocket the fines and I double guarantee you that not one cent of it will be used for robocall reduction.
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Yet you want the government to step in and play mommy and daddy for everybody.
As long as it's filled with republicans and corporate whores (but I repeat myself) it won't do that. But it's still the entity which should.
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Robocallers have already relocated their call centers offshore, where US law doesn't reach. Good luck with collecting those fines!
Re:And nothing will change (Score:5, Interesting)
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There is a legally binding preemptive register for cold callers, and a formal right to refuse to be contacted by parties you have corresponded with in the past. I've seen it work when two years ago I a
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Telcos need to filter call origin info vs data in the call info.
Getting a true identity of the offende
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They could always make it opt in... ...come to think of it they probably WOULD make it opt-in if they could charge for it as a premium feature.
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Disagree (Score:2)
This bill allows the FCC, to use resources from the FTC which can levee greater fines and has authority over the stocks and the exchanges on which they are traded, as well as the ability to call on DHS and DOJ which have personnel to kick in doors and investigators to follow up get warrants and seize equipment. In addition to extending the time in which infractions can be enforced as well as a much higher ceiling on the fines they can levee.
Of course it still has to pass through Congress and as you say be e
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When they start charging the telco's for every robocall they don't filter, it's a near-certainty that this cost will just be passed on to all subscribers, and rates will simply go up.
So no.... that's not a solution.
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When they start charging the telco's for every robocall they don't filter, it's a near-certainty that this cost will just be passed on to all subscribers, and rates will simply go up.
So no.... that's not a solution.
That is now how business work.. They are already charging as much as they can get away with, if they could get away with raising prices,, THEY WOULD ALREADY HAVE DONE SO!
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If you put the same cost on all the suppliers, the price of (even comoditee) products will go up.
You would hope that one of the players would fix the problem, not see the costs and gain happy customers.
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I don't even care anymore
90% of my business now revolves around emails, some form of text messaging service like twitter, facebook, etc, and some form of voice over internet calls like Skype or Facetime, wechat, etc. This should have been done 20 years ago when phone numbers still had relevance, not when other means of communication begins to rapidly grow, with the ability to actually filter people.
Now with called ID being spoofed all the time, making phone numbers worthless (Thanks telcos for that!) and my
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I agree with your points.
There is also a psychological toll to robocalls that we're not going to come back from --ever. We don't even pick up the phone, even for known callers sometimes. Just looking at the ringing device's phone screen is a drag when we know it's a dud 50/50.
After slowly seeing the ramp up in the past 10 years, it's hard for tech savvy people to ignore the peace-of-mind workarounds. We can switch off the ringer or go on airplane at odd hours of the day, use contact list-only whitelists 24/
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Doesn't your phone do that automatically?
Mine has spam filtering, so if a call is from a known spammer it doesn't even bother ringing. That fixed 99% of the problem for me.
Re: And nothing will change (Score:5, Informative)
An Anonymous Coward predicted:
and they'll have an exemption for political calls...
Yes, they will.
"They" will, because of the First Amendment's free speech guarantee. It is a long-established principle in American jurisprudence that political speech is granted extraordinary protections. Robocalls on behalf of candidates for elected office fall into that category, and will thus receive exemption from any strictures placed on commercial robocallers. By legal precedent, commercial speech is granted the lowest level of protection from government censorship under First Amendment principles, whereas political speech in general - including artwork that expresses a political viewpoint or social commentary, as well as campaign robocalls - enjoys the highest level of protection.
Note that courts have long held that First Amendment prohibitions on government censorship extends to government bodies, and elected and appointed officials at all levels of goverment from the Federal to the hyper-local. A village council has no more right to prohibit protected forms of speech than does Congress. On the other hand, it has also been firmly established by the courts that governments are under no obligation to provide a platform for political speech, unless they are compelled to do so by state or local law. Thus, as a relevant example, in California, city councils are required to provide a period for public comment at their meetings, but they are permitted to limit the length of time any individual speaker is alotted. Most therefore have rules limiting comments by uninvited speakers - which is to say, "the general public" - to 3 minutes. (That limit is not universally enforced - but, when it is, it must apply equally to everyone who chooses to speak during the public comment period.)
Railing at politicians for carving out exemptions from robocalling for themselves indicates a lack of understanding of the effect of the First Amendment on the ability of legislators to restrict political speech. They can and will specifically exempt calls of a political nature from robocalling - but, if they did not do so, rest assured that the first pol that's cited for violating the shiny, new restrictions they try to emplace will promptly sue them for violating his or her right to free speech.
He (or she) will, without question, win that lawsuit - and the judge who hears the case might well rule the entire law to be unconstitutional, and unenforceable ...
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So, if politicians were interested in fixing it you could require all 'legal' robocalls to have a standard identifier as a robocall, and a further category one for the type. Then mandate a method for choosing whether to get those calls controlled by the recipient. I'd like both a do not call list and a user controlled filter, possibly based on a new secure
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Spamalope posited:
Individuals own and pay for their own phones. That's their podium/forum. 3rd parties have no first amendment rights to their/our phones only their own.
So, if politicians were interested in fixing it you could require all 'legal' robocalls to have a standard identifier as a robocall, and a further category one for the type. Then mandate a method for choosing whether to get those calls controlled by the recipient. I'd like both a do not call list and a user controlled filter, possibly based on a new secure caller ID. (could be normal caller ID on the user end, so long as the telco verifies accuracy)
So you can filter 'RoboPol' from ringing your phone, but allow 'RoboDR' or 'RoboAppointment' so you can get appointment reminders or pharmacy notices that your prescription is ready. i.e. keep the things useful to you
You can require that political calls of any kind must identify the source in an accurate way without any misleading naming or obfuscation of the source. The groups involved must be identified, and name shell games are probibited. i.e. a new shell group every week so they seem to be from a different source, or calls designed to annoy you by groups naming themselves in a way designed to mislead to smear their opposition should be prohibited.
I like the idea. Unfortunately, implementing it is nowhere near as straightforward as you might like. Among other problems, your proposed restrictions - which, again, I think are perfectly reasonable, and would probably garner widespread public support - impinge on existing laws (and regulations, which are actually a different thing than laws) that fall outside of the scope of telecommunications legislation. As a for-instance, IRS regulations regarding 501(c)(4) organizations [vox.com].
Perhaps more
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I'm a little baffled by the premise here - are you claiming that the First Amendment protects robocalling by politicians because it's political speech, but doesn't protect robocalls from the Jehovah's Witnesses or Planned Parenthood? Not that I've ben robocalled by either of those groups, but why not? If it's Amazon robocalling to tell me about a sale, is that the part of the spectrum where the problem is? How about the American Nazi party robocalling me to tell me about their beliefs and an upcoming rally?
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https://slashdot.org/~jeffporcaro inquired:
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I'm a little baffled by the premise here - are you claiming that the First Amendment protects robocalling by politicians because it's political speech, but doesn't protect robocalls from the Jehovah's Witnesses or Planned Parenthood? Not that I've ben robocalled by either of those groups, but why not? If it's Amazon robocalling to tell me about a sale, is that the part of the spectrum where the problem is? How about the American Nazi party robocalling me to tell me about their beliefs and an upcoming rally? Please help me understand why carving out an exception for my senator to robocall me is protected, but these other forms of free speech are not.
Try reading my post again. I explained why political calls are already exempt from robocall prohibitions. It's not my opinion. It's a fact. Federal courts have ruled that such calls are exempt from, for instance, California's law that requires a human being initiate a robocall, and ask the person receiving it for permission to play the recording.
The fact that that law is routinely flouted is entirely beside the point - which is that Federal courts have repeatedly
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No, it would just require that political calls are done by people and not some automated system with a prerecorded message.
Too late, almost (Score:1)
I cancelled my land line and block and ignore callers not in my contact list.
T-mobile also tracks and blocks reported spammers, which does seem to have helped.
However, if cell phone spam continues or worsens, then I'll just revert to voip services, email, and a UPS or FedEx envelope.
To hell with them all, spammers and politicians alike. In fact, during elections they are pretty much one in the same.
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You block callers not on your contact list? Right...... so when that Hospital calls to tell you that insert-loved-ones-name-here has been in a terrible accident, you're sending the call to the bit bucket?
I'd say yes. As a policy, I ignore unknown numbers. Trained professionals will leave a professional message that will not say much, but will get my attention. Family members will too, even if the message is less secure. 99% of scammers will not leave a message, because the long life of their continuing con demands that no individual mark be given the opportunity to call back at our convenience and report a long-lived landline to the police. So all voicemail is potentially true (or super-rare scams where the
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I'm not the original poster but I do the same thing. The hospital (or anyone else who has a legitimate need to contact me) will leave voicemail. My phone tells me I have voicemail and shows me a transcript. I call them back. Easy.
You tell me. On the whole I feel pretty decent about it, but I'm starting to feel a Sisyphean futility to it all. Spammers know no one will bother tracking them down, so they're starting to leave voicemail much more often. So, I'm
I wish him luck. (Score:2)
I personally get at least two calls a day on my land line from these assholes as it is, and I was getting almost five a day during this past election season. If it wasn't for the fact I can't get any cellular service where I live I would shut the line off entirely. In terms of the former it's somewhat interesting that I hear the exact same voice even though they seem to be from entirely different companies trying to get something out of me.
And on the point of my later statement, one thing that really shou
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it's somewhat interesting that I hear the exact same voice even though they seem to be from entirely different companies trying to get something out of me.
If they could make the voices sound like William Shatner, Christopher Walken, Samuel L. Jackson, or Joe Pesci, then I might actually stay on the line to listen.
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I personally get at least two calls a day on my land line from these assholes as it is, and I was getting almost five a day during this past election season. If it wasn't for the fact I can't get any cellular service where I live I would shut the line off entirely.
Yeah, that really doesn't matter. I get 2 or more of them on my mobile everyday too. My favorite are the ones that inform me that my social security number has been canceled.
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I has a solution (Score:1)
I forward all calls to Google voice. Works very well. Pity they'll inevitably fuck it up because, you know, that's what Google does.
But for now it filters Red Cross spam very well, and the transcription let's me see those that slip through at a glance.
spoofed calls from abroad (Score:5, Insightful)
If FBI sets up honey pots, take the bait, follow up, go up the chain and fine the people who hire these robo callers, then it might have some effect. Otherwise you can even call for death penalty, it wont have any effect.
I smell bullshit (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, we know damn well how to stop Robocalls, you stop them at the source by making AT&T et al police their bloody network. They don't do this because they're making money off the robocalls.
So once again, I smell bullshit. More political theater to distract me and you from real issues like healthcare, wages and those 8 bloomin' wars we're fighting....
Give the fine (Score:5, Insightful)
to the telco. Financial incentive to the telco would fix it. As it is, the telco profits from the extra biz.
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Like this guy: https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2018/05/11/robocaller-fined-120-million-fcc-nearly-100-million-spoofed-calls/601287002/ [usatoday.com]?
Re: I smell bullshit (Score:2)
You could stop them by transferring a nickel from the gallery's account to the recipient's. Don't tell me the telcos don't have the capability to do retry much anything with billing.
Do I get a percentage? (Score:5, Insightful)
Shouldn't the end-user get a percentage of that fine? That would make me want to almost sign up, just until I could validate the caller. Then whack, I get $5k. That would be awesome.
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B. In a way you kinda will, but it'll be about 1/325,000,000th of the fine and you won't be able to spend it directly.
Hmm (Score:2)
>"Broadens the authority of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to levy civil penalties of up to $10,000 per call"
*CIVIL* penalty. So nothing will change. It needs to be a CRIMINAL penalty with a way to tip off for enforcement. NOBODY is going to do the work needed to try and find out who it is so they can spend thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours to "sue" them.
>"Extends the window for the FCC to catch and take civil enforcement action against"
So the FCC will take civil action? Does
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Imagine a cell phone app for this, like existing 'record my call' android apps th
Umm... (Score:1)
So, the act wants to engage the FCC (currently run by a former lobbiest) with the CPB, also compromised and basically useless, to combat something that makes someone money.
Uh...huh.
And y'all buy that this is useful? Lol
The CFPB is probably unconstitutional (Score:2)
This is an agency with broad authority, but no accountability to or oversite by elected officials.
https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
It got so absurd that the former head of the CFPB felt he had the authority to name his own replacement. And their budget comes from the fed and not Congress.
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Guess you missed the memo that the Deep State refactored the Constitution. The replacement is called 'mercantilism'.
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Guess you missed the memo that the Deep State refactored the Constitution. The replacement is called 'mercantilism'.
It's odd then that the Deep State is allegedly opposed to the current mercantilist U.S. President.
This is Good! (Score:1)
I would love to see this happen, but... (Score:2)
If any way existed of finding robocallers, there would already be apps that could nail them. Some robocalls on business VoIP can be filtered (nomorobo.com) but this scheme does not work for most consumer lines.
Does this bill totally outlaw spoofing of Caller ID by locking in the ID when a line is provisioned?
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There's a few valid and good reasons to spoof Caller IDs--but we should certainly have the tech so you could have a 'display-as' a la reply-to in emails, so it doesn't work for hiding your number and allow/encourage/require telcos to make sure the actual and display-as number are owned by the same person so you can only spoof yourself. (Why might you want to? Well, I might only have your business phone's number in my phone's contact lists, but you need to make an urgent call to me from your personal cell
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Caller ID information is user-settable as a convenience for business users. It would be irksome to have this information modifiable only at the telco level, but we're going to have to do this if we want to filter robocalls.
If $1500 didn't do it, $10K won't either (Score:2)
Fix caller ID (Score:2)
Make it so caller id can not be spoofed. Not sure if that is possible. At least make it a major crime to spoof caller id. I'll allow id blocking since there are times when that is necessary (anonymous tips, etc.). Make the telcos responsible for enforcing it (as much as is feasible).
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Caller ID "spoofing" is a major feature that many people often use. For example, Google Home uses it when you set it up to utilize your cell's number when you call out. There are also services that allow you to send and receive work calls using your work number from your personal cell.
But, behind the scenes, the real device making the call is always known. What is needed is a trivial means of letting private attorneys pursue the civil fines - something that these traffic ticket type shops can handle. You co
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Oh, they can authenticate caller identity. And the FCC is trying.
https://www.engadget.com/2018/... [engadget.com]
Then again, if you're cynical, you might see this as "stop, or I'll say stop again". Seems unlikely major telcos will really move in earnest if merely asked to do so, without actual regulatory requirement to do so. Seems likely the FCC's desire to curb this problem will become actual rules under our current administration.
Not Harsh Enough (Score:1)
simple (Score:2)
Just use standard methods.
All we really need to do is ban caller ID spoofing.
reverse charge (Score:2)
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Of course, and I get that... but I would suggest that if this overhead is low enough that it is not going to be a problem for legitimate businesses, then I don't think it will be terribly problematic for robocallers either.
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Will that include spam? (Score:2)
Will the bill include spam?
Offshore (Score:2)
Robocallers have already moved their call centers to Canada, Mexico, or anywhere else, where US law doesn't reach. Good luck collecting those fines!
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Fines mean nothing (Score:2)
Who comes up with the acronyms? (Score:2)
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"By the way, you're a fucking idiot. You think businesses and banks and industry are texting each other?"
Yes. Yes they are. 90% of my business revolves around some form of text messaging or voice over internet service, be it emails, wechat, Facebook, Skype, facetime, etc. My Bank even Skypes me and text messages me. And I'm in the manufacturing business. Fun fact, rest of the world is using these services on a daily basis for business. Being in denial of this is quite the delusion.
There's a good reason why
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I have a physical address. I have a very large warehouse. The phone maybe gets 10% use at most by my CSRs. Everything is online. The vast majority of my suppliers use Skype. All my customers are either email (Most of the time don't even hear their voice) or some other form of voice over the internet. Everything international is almost majority done on WeChat or Skype. And I agree with you, probably that landline I have isn't going away soon, but I'm at the point I can't justify paying $1000 a month for 10%
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