FCC Chair Wants Carriers to Block Robocalls from Spoofed Numbers

Megalith

Megalith

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While nobody is ready to give Ajit a break just yet, the FCC Chair has finally made a decision that everyone can agree with: ending unwanted calls. The agency took a step toward eliminating robocalls some years ago, but Caller ID spoofing allowed them to continue. New rules proposed will attempt to prevent this abuse of unassigned or invalid phone numbers. Pai says that there are 2.4 billion robocalls a month, but I can’t remember the last time I actually got one.

The FCC in 2015 made it clear that voice service providers can offer call blocking tools to customers, but commissioners said at the time that more needed to be done about Caller ID spoofing. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has now scheduled a preliminary vote for March 23 on new rules designed to solve the problem. "One particularly pernicious category of robocalls is spoofed robocalls—i.e., robocalls where the caller ID is faked, hiding the caller’s true identity," the proposal says. "Fraudsters bombard consumers’ phones at all hours of the day with spoofed robocalls, which in some cases lure consumers into scams (e.g., when a caller claims to be collecting money owed to the Internal Revenue Service) or lead to identity theft."
 
Sadly it is not only robocallers that spoof their origin in the caller id. How many of you guys have gotten the call from some Indian guy saying "Hello this is Air Duct Cleaning..." with numbers from people you know or even your own.
 
This a YUUUGEEE problem for me. We need to work on this bigly. I get endless amounts of spam calls. Marriot hotel winner! FBI says 1 in 4 house broken into! All aboard for your free cruise package! My warranty on my car is about to expire!

I probably get 10 of these calls a week. Robocalls are supposed to be illegal.
 
fkers call me all the time about student load elimination, indian tech support, other crap
 
I too want robocalls blocked. I received TWO calls that were the exact same last week. On Monday, received a call. I answered it, then heard rustling, "Oh, I'm sorry, I was having trouble with my headset, Hi, we noticed you stayed at our resort last month" I ended it there and blocked the number. Then, on Wednesday, got a call, and the exact same message played. I checked, and they're very different numbers. One was a 206 area code and the other 253. Both Washington numbers. I think they do it so they appear local.
 
Well at least he's done something that's pro-consumer. It'd be nice if he turns out to be as consumer focused as Wheeler was (which if anyone's forgotten, was unexpected).

cyberguyz said:
Sadly it is not only robocallers that spoof their origin in the caller id. How many of you guys have gotten the call from some Indian guy saying "Hello this is Air Duct Cleaning..." with numbers from people you know or even your own.
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This has happened to me so many times never happened to me

viscountalpha said:
It's time for a caller ID upgrade.
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No sure what they'd do. Sure caller ID could refer to the calling number field, but if it does that, then you'll see the individual extension when Customer Support calls you back, which is less useful than if you see the main phone number (1800-Get-Help). And clearly Get Help doesn't want you calling individual extensions, because it will normally be busy, while the main number will always put you in the queue.
 
I want original numbers period. Yes there are still ways around this. Unscrupulous people registering vast numbers of VOIP numbers with places like vonage or google voice and others that "give" them away. But at least then it's only good for a day or so.

I get incessent calls.. "Dell Tech support" or "Lower your credit card interest rates" and even.. "You've won a grant for 9 thousand dollars from the IRS."

I screw with them because I can. I'm sure they send my number around then.
 
Huge problem. I get one a day.

Note, I'm including the scam calls (with humans) in this since those are robodialers that pass it off to a human on connection.
 
I got one the other day that couldn't properly time the robo with my answering machine. "... don't do anything with your windows or mac based machine until you've talked with our certified IT experts." They're CERTIFIED, doncha know.
 
What would really be useful is if carriers would actually track origin of calls; sort of like received headers on email, and then provide tools for users to mark calls as spam (hang up and dial *SPAM or whatever). Then they could do analysis and block calls from other carriers that provided exclusively bad calls. For trusted carriers (or carriers with a low mix of bad calls), they could feed back the spam reports, and that carrier could boot customers that are causing problems.
 
I get a few a week. I just don't answer numbers I don't recognize. If it's someone that really does need to talk to me, they'll leave a message.
 
I hate robocalls and other scammy calls.

If it were me in charge of that, I would impose a $1,000 fine for every single call these scammers make.

It needs to end, and end now.

These idiots of course don't honor the do-not-call list either.

Round them all up and send them to North Korea.
 
Take away net neutrality, give more rules to an agency that this administration would like to gut or even dismantle. Yay?
 
cyclone3d said:
If it were me in charge of that, I would impose a $1,000 fine for every single call these scammers make.
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would you take the time to find out the current penalties?

or would you just blurt out everything that comes to mind on Twitter?
 
needmorecarnitine said:
would you take the time to find out the current penalties?

or would you just blurt out everything that comes to mind on Twitter?
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I would check to see what the current fines are. As it is now though, since the fines are not actively enforced, there are effectively 0 fines.

Oh, and to top it off, instead of the fine money going to whoever they go to now, they would go to the people that the scammers call.

You make unsolicited calls, you get fined and have to pay the person/people you called.
 
Am I the only person who doesn't get robocals? I think I have gotten maybe one or two EVER. I have a cell but no landline. Is this a landline only problem?
 
I've been phone spammed by a robocaller saying "Hi this is Rachel" lately, calling me to inform me that "I've won" some BS shit. I've always hung up before getting any further. That shit is annoying as fuck.

They need to not pussyfoot around the issue and carve out exceptions and just get to the point where they ban any and all telemarketing without exception based on it being a charity or a political campaign or if you already have an existing relationship with the company.

Just a complete ban on any telemarketing, be it via voice or text.
 
At work, we have 14 phone lines. I get around 10-20 robo dial calls a DAY, to the point where I've been pushing my boss to give me about $5k to build a PBX and setup an auto attendant.

This change would be a stet in the right direction for sure, as 80% of the call I get are from a spoofed caller ID
 
i get 3-4 robo calls on my cell a day. I have to pick them up too or else they go to voicemail. It is faster to answer and hang up than it is to access voicemail, put in password, and then delete said voicemail.
 
cyberguyz said:
Sadly it is not only robocallers that spoof their origin in the caller id. How many of you guys have gotten the call from some Indian guy saying "Hello this is Air Duct Cleaning..." with numbers from people you know or even your own.
Click to expand...
Oh god, I was tired after a night shift. Some Indian guy calls me and per my personal policy I thank him for the call, but I'm not interested / hang up.

Dude calls again; 'Look man, I already said no, don't call me again'.

CALLS A THIRD TIME!!!!
But this time he starts the conversation by saying "Petty Officer" (Navy Rank).... oh crap... Some Lieutenant from the base I've never spoke to needed me to come back in and fix someone elses mistake. He had a good sense of humor though.
 
nilepez said:
Well at least he's done something that's pro-consumer. It'd be nice if he turns out to be as consumer focused as Wheeler was (which if anyone's forgotten, was unexpected).


This has happened to me so many times never happened to me


No sure what they'd do. Sure caller ID could refer to the calling number field, but if it does that, then you'll see the individual extension when Customer Support calls you back, which is less useful than if you see the main phone number (1800-Get-Help). And clearly Get Help doesn't want you calling individual extensions, because it will normally be busy, while the main number will always put you in the queue.
Click to expand...

They need to upgrade the standard if it can be spoofed so easily.
 
cyberguyz said:
Sadly it is not only robocallers that spoof their origin in the caller id. How many of you guys have gotten the call from some Indian guy saying "Hello this is Air Duct Cleaning..." with numbers from people you know or even your own.
Click to expand...

That is still a robocaller. The computer just tried a bunch of numbers till somebody finally answers.

westrock2000 said:
This a YUUUGEEE problem for me. We need to work on this bigly. I get endless amounts of spam calls. Marriot hotel winner! FBI says 1 in 4 house broken into! All aboard for your free cruise package! My warranty on my car is about to expire!

I probably get 10 of these calls a week. Robocalls are supposed to be illegal.
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Yes, they are illegal, but the problem is that there is no way to track them. Only about 20% of the calls are able to be traced back to somebody in the USA and result in fines. So they have been looking into new ways to get around these. Last year they gave telephone companies the ability to do whatever they wanted to these people. If you want to outright block calls from numbers that you see calling a lot of people, go right ahead. Previously it was illegal to prevent somebody from calling your customers but they decided that you have to fight this some how.

viscountalpha said:
It's time for a caller ID upgrade.
Click to expand...

There really isn't a way to upgrade it.

Grimlaking said:
I want original numbers period. Yes there are still ways around this. Unscrupulous people registering vast numbers of VOIP numbers with places like vonage or google voice and others that "give" them away. But at least then it's only good for a day or so.

I get incessent calls.. "Dell Tech support" or "Lower your credit card interest rates" and even.. "You've won a grant for 9 thousand dollars from the IRS."

I screw with them because I can. I'm sure they send my number around then.
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There are issues with this. Which is the same issue with the request for a caller ID upgrade. Some times you want / need everything to appear different. You might have lots of direct lines in an office, but when you call out you don't want everyone to know your DIDs so instead everything appears to come from a single number so that they call back to the switch board. For example, maybe everyone in a call center has their own direct number, but if they call a customer back they want it to show up as the main support number and not their phone number. Or what about private numbers? there would be no caller id information.

Zarathustra[H] said:
I've been phone spammed by a robocaller saying "Hi this is Rachel" lately, calling me to inform me that "I've won" some BS shit. I've always hung up before getting any further. That shit is annoying as fuck.

They need to not pussyfoot around the issue and carve out exceptions and just get to the point where they ban any and all telemarketing without exception based on it being a charity or a political campaign or if you already have an existing relationship with the company.

Just a complete ban on any telemarketing, be it via voice or text.
Click to expand...

Rachel from card holder services calls you also?? I thought what we had was special. that fucking whore!!!!! ;)
 
viscountalpha said:
They need to upgrade the standard if it can be spoofed so easily.
Click to expand...

But there really isn't a way to fix that. It is the same as email, I can send an email using your email address to you right now if I knew what your email address was. Because an SMTP server lets you send out whatever you want as long as you are authorized to send out from that server, on the flip side the receiver will assume that anything that they receive is valid. Now you can turn on certain settings that tries to verify that an outgoing server is allowed to send on a domain's behalf, but by doing that you prevent your users from ever being able to use a different outgoing server which can be a problem at times.

For the caller id part, there isn't really any way to do something like that. In the case of the toll free example. If a company owns a toll free number it might route to one office but from there go to call centers all over the world. Not every telephone company would know about that toll free number so at best they would just send out the caller id. So sadly there is no real way to validate that the number calling out has permission to use a certain caller id value when sending the call out, and the receiving side has no choice but to assume that it receives is valid as it has no idea where the call came from. Calls work about the same as multiple NATed networks. You make a call and your carrier sends the call to some other switch, if that person isn't a customer of that location then it does a lookup and sends it to another switch, which then sends the call to another switch... the only switch the end switch knows about is who send the call to it at the last hop because every switch recreates the messages using their information to build the path for the call.
 
phone network is the new TOR lol

i find it unlikely phone companies can't track calls more likely they cant be bothered as they get money for every connected call so not in there interest to block the call (its bad enough in the USA/India where you're charged for Receiving a text which is stupid as you cant stop a inbound text, the sender should always be charged for the whole message how it works for the rest of the world )

VOip calls are a problem as all you can do is just block the VoIP exchange that is doing the VoIP to Phone network call but then people complain about genuine skype calls been blocked (that or the phone networks should charge VoIP phone exchange companies very high fees or fix the spam issues)
 
I get anywhere from 1-25 calls a day almost every single day from 7 am to 9 pm Including Sundays !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I think the phone companies really just need to pull the plug on these bots, scammers, etc.. if Possible Permantly and forever but the problem is there getting PAID from the scammers to use and sell numbers make money and such. The I care factor isnt around anymore in todays world for much of anything sad to say or the HONEST Aprouch. I block as many calls as i can but its so useless and im on the do not call list since day one of it, it doesnt work either. Market and research Co can call im not sure why and how they get away with it as they claim were NOT selling you anything attitude but they get paid by someone or something to make the calls though...........strange......Id make it a law if your not real and dont have a genuine reason for calling me or anyone else and you have a fake number the REAL ID of you must be shown or pay billions to us the consumer for harrasing us and consider it a Terror Threat for NOT identifying yourself.
 
likeman said:
phone network is the new TOR lol

i find it unlikely phone companies can't track calls more likely they cant be bothered as they get money for every connected call so not in there interest to block the call (its bad enough in the USA/India where you're charged for Receiving a text which is stupid as you cant stop a inbound text, the sender should always be charged for the whole message how it works for the rest of the world )

VOip calls are a problem as all you can do is just block the VoIP exchange that is doing the VoIP to Phone network call but then people complain about genuine skype calls been blocked (that or the phone networks should charge VoIP phone exchange companies very high fees or fix the spam issues)
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I am in charge of a telephone switch for a telephone company. Trust me if I could block these calls I would. All I know is that AT&T is passing me a call from 555-555-1111, I don't know who gave them the call or who it really is. With how people pass calls around today be glad that 85% of your calls even make it anywhere. We have a direct connection with every major cell phone company. And yet if somebody calls from a sprint cell phone, sometimes the call comes from AT&T's switch, some times it comes from Comcast, some times from some other random person. I once had to trouble shoot two calls, one from a sprint customer and the other from a Comcast customer. The Sprint cell phone call came over Comcast's trunks and the call from a Comcast customer came over Century Link's trunks. Because it just so happen that was the cheapest way for them to route the calls that day.

What they are working on now is a national database for this type of stuff. You receive a call and before you are sent the call it checks against a database. If the database says that the caller is ok then it allows it through. However if the database notices that 555-555-1111 has called 555-444-1111 then 555-444-1112, then 1113, then 1114.. after awhile it will flag that number as bad. if it notices that this one number is doing this for multiple areas it will flag it quicker. Now this will be a service that once offered you will have to opt into as it could accidently block legit services so they want to make sure that they are covering their bases by making you opt into maybe missing a call or two every now and then by accident from some type of mass caller vs forcing you into the program. Which once this FCC ruling goes into effect more companies will have to use such a system which means better learning and hopefully fewer errors.
 
I keep getting tons of spam calls from Ohio numbers, or what is claimed to be Ohio anyway, since we are talling about spoofing Caller ID. Same for Chicago numbers as well. I get them on a weekly basis right now. One time they tried 4 times in one day.
 
I recently had calls from numbers that my phone has listed as spam. It must be a new feature with Google where spam numbers go into Google's data base and automatic flags it as spam? I typically don't pick up if it's from a number I don't recognize. If it is a legit number and important then they will leave a voicemail. Many of these companies are Phishing for legit numbers to sell. A couple years back I made the mistake of answering a random number and they asked me if this was so and so. I foolishly answered yes and they hanged up instantly. For the next few months I got constant spam calls from various places. I had dozens of numbers blocked. I would get the same voice mails f I'm different numbers. It has finally stopped after a year but fuck it irritating.
 
If you're on a cell phone you may have the option of blocking the call on the phone. I think iPhones can do this. If android can't do that, they you can always assign a silent ringer (same with the iPhone) so calls from that number don't ring. If you don't answer, they eventually quit calling.
 
Hey, years ago, when a modem or fax machine called, it would generate an ear splitting noise. Does anyone know of such a device that can be used to give the telemarketers a quick headache (not to mention permanent ringing in the ears)?

nilepez said:
If you're on a cell phone you may have the option of blocking the call on the phone.
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Call Control app works for android. But with telemarketers that keep spoofing numbers, it won't help.


[21CW]killerofall said:
I have a cell but no landline. Is this a landline only problem?
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Nope. Happens with both. I'm tired of changing my phone numbers. And it's the phone company, too. Any company you give your phone number too, will most likely sell it to someone.
Zarathustra[H] said:
Just a complete ban on any telemarketing, be it via voice or text.
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We can only dream.
likeman said:
more likely they cant be bothered as they get money for every connected call so not in there interest to block the call
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As much as we love 'unlimited' service for a flat rate, that has to stop. There has to be some charge per call and/or text. That's the only way this will stop. When it costs a telemarketer per call, they will quickly go out of business.

Right now, I'm getting anywhere from zero to about 20 spam calls a day, and I can't get rid of Freddy at dosomething.org to keep them from texting me nonsense; I email, I call them and complain, it stops for a few months, and then starts up all over again. I wound up using Call Control app to stop the texts, but it doesn't always work right, I can't get texted pics or any multimedia with it as my message app.

I used to have the sit tones at the beginning of my answering machine message; it got rid of most automated system calls. But I had to take it down because of recent business reasons, as I couldn't afford to have clients thinking my line was out of order (and yes, there are too many stupid people who can't be bothered to check any notations in a person's contact information so that they'd ignore the tones).
 
viscountalpha said:
They need to upgrade the standard if it can be spoofed so easily.
Click to expand...
I don'tk now how they'd do that. It's been a long time since i worked on the switch side, but it'd require changes to the packets and it'd have to be agreed upon by every switch company (and possibly others) around the world. Best thing you can do is don't answer the phone if you don't know the number. If you're getting these at work, then the company needs to block spam calls. Most of the time, the numbers are not spoofed to a number known by the called party.
 
nightfly said:
Hey, years ago, when a modem or fax machine called, it would generate an ear splitting noise. Does anyone know of such a device that can be used to give the telemarketers a quick headache (not to mention permanent ringing in the ears)?


Call Control app works for android. But with telemarketers that keep spoofing numbers, it won't help.



Nope. Happens with both. I'm tired of changing my phone numbers. And it's the phone company, too. Any company you give your phone number too, will most likely sell it to someone.
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I don't know what you're doing, but I don't have this issue. Yes I get the occasional telemarketer/robocall, but I don't answer it. I block it and maybe calls will come from 1 or 2 other numbers (also blcoked) and then the calls stop after a few days. I get less than 5 of these/month
 
cyberguyz said:
Sadly it is not only robocallers that spoof their origin in the caller id. How many of you guys have gotten the call from some Indian guy saying "Hello this is Air Duct Cleaning..." with numbers from people you know or even your own.
Click to expand...


This started happening a few weeks ago, I am getting 2-3 calls a day with my own phone number on the caller ID. I called Tmobile and they are at a loss as how to block it and are looking into it.
 
nilepez said:
I don't know what you're doing, but I don't have this issue.
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A couple of things. I don't know how they're getting my phone number. I'm on the don't call list, it's unlisted, and I don't give it to anyone. Yet, I get: calls from roofing/siding companies and others that think I own the house (I rent where I live and have for years), charities (PBA, illness like MDA), surveys, polling (political), etc.. I understand that big business hands off my info to 'their business partners' but this is ridiculous. I get calls for my dead parents, too, because I'm handling their estate. When it's all over, the sit tones go back up and maybe I'll get some peace. Meantime, I just jerk the callers around. When it's a woman, I turn it into an obscene phone call; can't be arrested, as SHE is the one who initiated the call. That's always a bit of fun. I tried it on a guy once, but he was into it, and I couldn't keep up all the stuff I was saying without laughing.
 
I use the app truecaller on my android. God i love it. If numbers are reported as spam by the general users it sends them right to voicemail, they can leave it there if it is important.
 
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