Comment by eitally
1 year ago
What they should have done is enforce Caller ID identification labels for robocalls. For example, "Police Officers Benevolent Association [Robocall]".
1 year ago
What they should have done is enforce Caller ID identification labels for robocalls. For example, "Police Officers Benevolent Association [Robocall]".
That would require upgrading literally 50-70 years worth of telecommunications infrastructure across the country, which isn't happening.
The old Bell companies are largely already in compliance with SHAKEN/STIR. It is mostly smaller shady companies that are not, because they know their customers don't want them to comply.
Time to make SHAKEN/STIR a requirement to participate in the phone network.
Better to abandon that technology all together (for normal phone calls). It should be used exclusively for emergency calls and similarly vital functions. Let everything else operate over cell networks and require explicit opt-ins before party A can call party B.
A man can dream.
Where is all the money going? You're saying we cant get some billions from 36 Trillion dollars? WTH
It's privately-owned infrastructure, for the most part. And if the companies could, they'd charge you simply for the privilege of existing in the same universe as the infrastructure even if no one ever used it, and just send that money to their shareholders.
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It's going to the FCC, of course. If they ever solved robocalls, what would be there for them to do? Literally, this agency has been trying to solve spam calls for half a century now. They are the most incompetent people in history.
That's not the priority. The priority is tax cuts for the rich. I know it sounds snarky, but I don't see how, since I've said the actual truth (TM).
The robocalls are already using the automated software-based infrastructure, not the old copper lines with analog calls.
Why not? Things have to eventually be replaced or upgraded.
Not even sure what you're referring to. Do you think the tone from pressing buttons on your landline is still analog signaling? It is not.
for landlines, do you mean?
No, it's not a one or the other thing. Phone calls don't work like web apps. Hell, most land lines aren't actually copper either , they're essentially VoIP. A phone call is not just a socket connection. Look up SS7 and PSTN. It's quite literally impossible to change any of this stuff, it's far too embedded.
What should be done is something else entirely. Apple and Google should offer, as part of their standard software, a personal "phone robot". When you get a new phone, you spend 15 minutes recording various phrases, and from that point on you just have the robot answer for you.
When the robot talks to these spammers and telemarketers, it will try to keep them on the phone as long as possible. A minute would be good, 10 minutes would be better. As the spammers tried to avoid this, Apple and Google could improve the robots to counter.
And, within a few months of this, at most, that industry would just be dead. It can't afford to spend a half hour on each call trying to determine if they've got a real live knucklehead who will start sending cash to Nigerian princes, or just bad software tricking operators who don't speak English as a first language. Their margins would drop, their need for more sophisticated AI to try to determine if they were talking to a real person or not would skyrocket, etc. It just wouldn't be economically viable to continue.
Not sure why this would come from Google or Apple. You basically just described RoboKiller, which already exists.
So that it would be standard, and could tap into the "setting up my new phone".
Just looked up Robokiller...
>Robokiller is a phone app that blocks 99% of spam calls and texts with predictive analytics and audio fingerprinting.
Doesn't look like what I'm talking about at all. We don't want the calls to be blocked, we want them to linger on forever. I'm not sure why that's so difficult to understand.
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I think they just basically described Kitboga[0].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitboga_(streamer)
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Computer time isn't that expensive; I'm relatively certain that the calls I get are either fully driven by voice recognition, or by someone in the third world or in prison, pressing buttons that activate pre-recorded statements by a script.
The former is cheap enough that yes, they would engage for 15 minutes. The latter are smart enough to understand what's going on so that they'd hang up.
> The former is cheap enough that yes, they would engage for 15 minutes.
No, they wouldn't. This isn't "hey, when they call some random number and talk to a grandma that will never buy their stuff/scams, is wasting 15 minutes that once a big deal for them".
It's 15 minutes on every call, or enough that they can't filter down to those who will end up sending money.
> The latter are smart enough to understand what's going on so that they'd hang up.
That's debatable. But even if they are smart enough, please describe what logic you think they're using that they can tell pre-recorded voice responses from a live person? What exactly would go on in one of those calls? Did his "oh sure, uh huh" sound a little too much like the last one?
They're not supergeniuses.
just forward the call to lenny. https://www.reddit.com/r/itslenny/
Who is "they" and how do they know which calls aren't legitimate?
Yes. Completely redesigning how phones work is exactly what we need. This problem is only going to get worse.
Well, that's a multi trillion dollar project that would involve every country in the world. Will never happen.
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consumers have an easier solution: they just don't answer the phone unless it's a someone they know.
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cryptographic signatures are going to have to start becoming necessary for all kinds of things, like even your average JPG image, otherwise nobody can tell what is "fake" or not, court evidence will start to become useless.
You'd have to completely redo the way telephony works. There is no way to enforce numbers or caller IDs.
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