Robocallers Posing As FCC Staff Blocked After Robocalling Real FCC Staff (arstechnica.com) 22
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Robocallers posing as employees of the Federal Communications Commission made the mistake of trying to scam real employees of the FCC, the FCC announced yesterday. "On the night of February 6, 2024, and continuing into the morning of February 7, 2024, over a dozen FCC staff and some of their family members reported receiving calls on their personal and work telephone numbers," the FCC said. The calls used an artificial voice that said, "Hello [first name of recipient] you are receiving an automated call from the Federal Communications Commission notifying you the Fraud Prevention Team would like to speak with you. If you are available to speak now please press one. If you prefer to schedule a call back please press two."
You may not be surprised to learn that the FCC does not have any "Fraud Prevention Team" like the one mentioned in the robocalls, and especially not one that demands Google gift cards in lieu of jail time. "The FCC's Enforcement Bureau believes the purpose of the calls was to threaten, intimidate, and defraud," the agency said. "One recipient of an imposter call reported that they were ultimately connected to someone who 'demand[ed] that [they] pay the FCC $1,000 in Google gift cards to avoid jail time for [their] crimes against the state.'" The FCC said it does not "publish or otherwise share staff personal phone numbers" and that it "remains unclear how these individuals were targeted." Obviously, robocallers posing as FCC employees probably wouldn't intentionally place scam calls to real FCC employees. But FCC employees are just as likely to get robocalls as anyone else. This set of schemers apparently only made about 1,800 calls before their calling accounts were terminated.
The FCC described the scheme yesterday when it announced a proposed fine of $4,492,500 against Telnyx, the voice service provider accused of carrying the robocalls. The FCC alleges that Telnyx violated "Know Your Customer (KYC)" rules by providing access to calling services without verifying the customers' identities. When contacted by Ars today, Telnyx denied the FCC's allegations and said it will contest the proposed fine.
You may not be surprised to learn that the FCC does not have any "Fraud Prevention Team" like the one mentioned in the robocalls, and especially not one that demands Google gift cards in lieu of jail time. "The FCC's Enforcement Bureau believes the purpose of the calls was to threaten, intimidate, and defraud," the agency said. "One recipient of an imposter call reported that they were ultimately connected to someone who 'demand[ed] that [they] pay the FCC $1,000 in Google gift cards to avoid jail time for [their] crimes against the state.'" The FCC said it does not "publish or otherwise share staff personal phone numbers" and that it "remains unclear how these individuals were targeted." Obviously, robocallers posing as FCC employees probably wouldn't intentionally place scam calls to real FCC employees. But FCC employees are just as likely to get robocalls as anyone else. This set of schemers apparently only made about 1,800 calls before their calling accounts were terminated.
The FCC described the scheme yesterday when it announced a proposed fine of $4,492,500 against Telnyx, the voice service provider accused of carrying the robocalls. The FCC alleges that Telnyx violated "Know Your Customer (KYC)" rules by providing access to calling services without verifying the customers' identities. When contacted by Ars today, Telnyx denied the FCC's allegations and said it will contest the proposed fine.
Oh I See (Score:5, Insightful)
If it happens to a Fed, it stops but if it's the rest of it we continue to get scam calls.
Re: (Score:3)
I'm somewhat surprised President Elon hasn't locked the FCC staff out of their offices yet.
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I'm somewhat surprised President Elon hasn't locked the FCC staff out of their offices yet.
That's probably next week. He's got a busy schedule, you know.
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I'm somewhat surprised President Elon hasn't locked the FCC staff out of their offices yet.
He's busy with his teen crew at The Treasury collecting everyone's SSI, Medicare, etc... and other private financial information. Not sure what he's going to do with it, but with the email server he's set up at OPM, I can imagine us *all* (in the U.S.) getting some sort of "Fork in the road" email at some point. That'll be fun...
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I can imagine us *all* (in the U.S.) getting some sort of "Fork in the road" email at some point. That'll be fun...
Dear 942-52-1235,
We have noticed that you are less than enthused to live under the rule of our dear leader. Either fall in line and learn to love it, or accept our severance offer* of what we deem to be five years' pay of what we believe your labor is worth (based on the federal tipped minimum wage — here's a tip — get a real job!)
* note: not an actual legal offer that you will ever be able to collect on
Wait, what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Wait-- the FCC has the ability to "terminate spam calling accounts"? But they only do it when FCC personnel are the ones being targeted???
Spam calling is illegal, but they tell us they can't do anything about it! So, really they can but they just don't want to?
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Wait-- the FCC has the ability to "terminate spam calling accounts"? But they only do it when FCC personnel are the ones being targeted???
Spam calling is illegal, but they tell us they can't do anything about it! So, really they can but they just don't want to?
My first thought as well. I somehow got one that calls me anywhere from three to nine times every single day, different origin number every single time, and leaves a voicemail asking me to call them back. It's been going on for months. My phone is bright enough to say "Probably spam" most of the time, but there should be some way to get that type of shit shut down. It's ridiculous. And you know if it were happening to an important person it'd be stopped in short order.
Re:Wait, what? (Score:5, Informative)
Even their announced actions against "Telnyx" will have little effect. What will happen will be that "Telnyx" will shut down/close, and a new company name with the same people will pop up. This effectively resets the FCCs power against them, and they have to wait until the new company causes problems again.
This is the basic problem with the spam call centers. They are never really shut down, they just pop up as a new entity. There needs to be better protections against these companies.
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It always did. But here is the problem, the process is slow.
Even their announced actions against "Telnyx" will have little effect. What will happen will be that "Telnyx" will shut down/close, and a new company name with the same people will pop up. This effectively resets the FCCs power against them, and they have to wait until the new company causes problems again.
This is the basic problem with the spam call centers. They are never really shut down, they just pop up as a new entity. There needs to be better protections against these companies.
This may be extreme, but I'm fine with the FCC swatting spam call centers. Same for identity thieves.
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You're going to need some kind of "Inter-Continental Ballistic SWAT Team" (ICBST) for that. And if we're on the same page, which I think we might be (wink wink), then I fully agree with you.
p.s. it's the page where "SWAT Team" is replaced with something some kind of thermo-nuclear MIRV.
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Naw, Seal Team Six, the group that went after Osama, Agent 47, etc...
More seriously, set up rules that telecoms that want to be able to call US numbers have to comply with that effectively bans this sort of stuff.
Yes, this might result in entire countries unable to call the US, at least for a bit.
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Possibly some sort of low-orbit ion cannon
It does not happen in Finland (Score:2)
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Wait-- the FCC has the ability to "terminate spam calling accounts"? But they only do it when FCC personnel are the ones being targeted???
Spam calling is illegal, but they tell us they can't do anything about it! So, really they can but they just don't want to?
Not sure about the specifics, but I imagine they have to verify things before they can take action. A SPAM outfit calling (several) people at the FCC directly probably isn't a great idea as it immediately gives the FCC that verification and information they need ...
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There are lots of shades of illegal, there is a lot of phone spam and it is generally handled in order of volume to the extent that anyone does anything about it at all, and the gears of justice grind slowly.
Impersonating the federal government is super duper illegal.
Obligatory Full Nelson (Score:1)
Ha [youtube.com] Ha! [fandom.com]
so they finally decided to do something? (Score:4, Informative)
The biggest offenders seem to be bandwidth.com and Sinch.
The FCC is pretty clear about its view on the matter [fcc.gov]. I understand Facebook, Inc. v. Duguid exists for now, but this story clearly proves there are other ways to go after carriers who do not contribute positively to society.
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> The biggest offenders seem to be bandwidth.com and Sinch
Those are where 100% of the spam calls I get come from.
Telnyx needs to Die (Score:5, Interesting)
When I worked in Telecom we absolutely hated Telnyx because they were the source of most of our customer problems; and for routing, because they would refuse to use ANAC queries like your required to, because queries against caller ID systems cost them money (fractions of a cent), so they would just cache some random results and not actually use the actual routing queries they were legally required to do as a CLEC, because most of their clients were actually offshore scam artists trying to steal elderly bank account information And they were actively fronting for them and trying to protect their user from being found out.
So everybody I know in telecom just considers them to be a scam company owned by scammers that are pretending to be a phone company.