That said, the robocall problem is getting worse, not better. Robocall volume is at an all-time high: https://robocallindex.com/
In many respects, the problem of telephone spam today is similar to the problem of email spam in the early 2000s. Litigating against spammers had limited efficacy, so the community developed blacklists, better filtering, and stronger authentication (SPF, DKIM, and DMARC).
Until the major carriers get serious about similar steps, especially filtering and authentication (i.e. SHAKEN and STIR), these fraudulent calls won't stop. And, in the interim, vulnerable populations will continue to be disproportionately victimized.
In addition to marking calls as scam, now they simply block them outright. Getting approximately 0 scam calls in the past 2 days.
Most people leave a voicemail. Thanks to technology, the voice mails get transcribed and I can quickly decide whether I should return the call.
I also see “Spam Likely” for a whole range of numbers. Not sure if it’s Apple or T-mobile but I sure do appreaciate the heads up.
I'm talking to random scammers more now because I'm looking for a job and I feel like I have to answer the phone even if I don't recognize the number. Man it is annoying.
I live in Europe, but do not receive robocalls at all (zero), while when I enter the US, and put in my US SIM, I immediately start getting multiple per day.
> Most taxpayers in the UK are taxed at source and so do not need to complete a Self Assessment Tax Return. ‘Taxed at source’ means that the money you receive has already had tax taken off, such as the wages you get from your employer when paid under the Pay As You Earn (PAYE) system, or UK bank interest taxed at source.
I just don't answer my phone anymore unless I recognize the incoming number. And caller ID is trivially easy to spoof. Thankfully nobody spoofs any of the numbers of my top 50 contacts.
If the major carriers don't soon understand the magnitude of the telephone spam/scam problem and treat it seriously, They will soon be crippling their business. While this is been likened here to the email spam problem in 2000, back then, everyone in the computer industry took the spam problem much more seriously telephone industry does now. E.,g., Verizon gleefully offers a blacklist where you can block 20 numbers (nevermind that the spam calls typically have spoofed caller IDs) -- they think they’re good, and it’s utterly useless.
They really need to implement a true Source ID (regardless of the presented caller ID), and a way to instantly flag calls as spam then do targeted tracking and prosecution. If they fail to do this or implement another effective solution, I expect they will lose a century-old line of business to new habits that work around the established habits.
But these are all on my work-phone and government agencies don't pay taxes anyway.
My personal phone has been relatively safe for unknown reasons that I'm happy about.
>“hundreds of millions” of dollars
I guess I'm not scamming anyone out of anything but if I was and got a million.... I like to think I'd be smart enough to burn everything and enjoy...
I hear people all the time saying "if I made a startup and sold if for millions of dollars, I'd retire and never work again", when most people who do make millions on their startup continue to work. It's that work ethic that is what made them that multi-million dollar startup.
Whether criminal or not, there's a particular work ethic that keeps people like this making more money when they could retire happily.
Thank goodness criminals are dumb!
This is not just with scams and crimes, but even with good things.
Is there any realistic chance of Indian law enforcement catching up with these guys?
Man I didn't know corporate and financal crime put up a home office. That's pretty brazen.
(have you been in an accident bots are around, but you don't get calls every day or multiple calls per day as a normal thing)
- Ask international callers to use an app instead.
I used to get calls every day and after doing this it stopped.
If you're new here, they both sound the same because they are: People asking money for stupid reasons. E.g. mis-applied payments, a "1st-world" banking system where payments take several days, lack of chip-and-PIN resulting in overdrafts and failed bill payments.
In some places, if a reporter stops by your work to ask you questions, you'll lose your job if you don't answer them, because the newspaper is the government. In the USA, it's usually the opposite.
It takes a while to sort it all out.
Have you got some examples? I don't think I ever got a call asking me for money. Or at least not one that I needed to act on immediately - a call from letting agency to check my rent payment would be the closest, but it was both verified and done outside of the call.
The story I've heard several times from different people about how it's handled in Poland - your operator usually subcontracts their support & telemarketing to a third party; some spammer will pay an employee of that third party to "liberate" their customer database as they end their employment.
Bonus: a FU to warrantless NSA metadata spying.
The article mentions restitution. Does anyone know how he could find out if he's eligible?
sip:13475147296@in.callcentric.com or plain old 1-347-514-7296
A lot of spam callers hang up once I say I'm transferring them, but sometimes they talk to Lenny until the whole script loops!
Collective action problem [1]. Namely, our system requires people to document and report such problems. Few people do. As a result, certain problems get disproportionate interest compared to others.
The phrases that keep them on the line the longest get played in the pool more frequently.
Long recordings get automatically posted to youtube.
They're so internet 1.0, we need to get to 2.0!
You can add some prestige to calling someone (having a human answering and screening your calls for you) at a pretty low cost (1 minute per call? 2-3 cheap workers could cover the whole biz, could share lines between ~ 50-100 people with distinct sounding names). eliminate all unsolicited calls for the customer.
Would be interesting to know more about this. In the legit call center business the phone numbers of people who have previously bought something are more valuable. The ability to target specific demographics is probably a prerequisite for a scam like this, calling randomly would be really expensive.
Sounds like the Prisoner’s Dilemma paid off for that third person.
I say I have to go look for it. So I randomly make noises like opening doors, closing drawers, shuffling papers. I had one on the line for 10 minutes before he gave up.
After a couple doses of "the treatment", they stop calling. Blessed relief!
This method works because it costs them human time. Just hanging up on their robot, or their human, doesn't work. They just call again.
Hilariously quite a lot of calls are "Google SEO" related, scammy sounding credit offers, and political donation solicitations.
Most people who need to speak to me attempt to contact me via different means anyways. I don't have much faith they will ever fix PSTN that I'm dreaming for the day I can start ignoring all calls.
By the time I received the IRS letters, I typically had to respond within a matter of days or face additional penalties (what if I was on vacation). Even the most basic of cross checking my tax forms would have clearly shown everything was legit. And these were by no means unusual or complex tax situations, just very basic things that millions of Americans report on their taxes every year. But even though I knew everything was above board, the tax laws are so convoluted that I was in constant fear the IRS would still find some BS reason I owed them more money.
