I have been getting calls that immediately start with, "Thank you for choosing Marriot Hotels!" for a couple years now. The message goes on to say how I am getting this great offer because I am a valued customer. On a couple occasions, I stayed on the line to get a human, they ask yes/no questions (are you over 28? do you have a valid credit card?). I just replied with questions of my own, and they immediately hung up. I can continue to ignore the calls, but they are always from a random local number and I get nearly twice as many of these calls than I get legitimate calls.
I did a search and found this has been around for a while and Marriot is aware:
http://news.marriott.com/2015/05/marriott-international-responds-to-continued-phone-scam-updated-oct-20-2015/
I have deliberated about posting, but I don't see the FCC [US Federal Communications Commission] as being able to act unless I can provide them something more than the spoofed phone number. Providing the number(s) probably won't help as they are spoofing the caller ID. I know that this is a long shot, but is there anything anyone can suggest beyond creating a spreadsheet of phone numbers, dates, and times to log these calls? Would that even be useful?
It seems that something is fundamentally broken with the current phone system, if this spoofing is even possible. But that is a side topic here, the real question is, what can I do, if anything, to get the data the FCC would need to shut this down?
(Score: 3, Informative) by SomeGuy on Wednesday March 15 2017, @11:00AM (11 children)
You seem to be assuming the phone company isn't in on it. That is not correct. They make money off of this, so they allow it.
On a side note, I get lots of telemarketer calls, but what boggles my mind is that when I happen to pick up the phone it is very often "dead air", eventually followed by a "bweeep" and then a "click" as the system hangs up. WTF? If they are trying to sell/scam/whatever shouldn't they have their pitch ready?
(Score: 2) by riT-k0MA on Wednesday March 15 2017, @11:04AM
Some companies pay their telemarketers a small fee if the user "cannot be reached". The telemarketers probably know that you're not interested, but want to make a little bit of cash for the call.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Rich26189 on Wednesday March 15 2017, @11:29AM (4 children)
My understanding is that the rob-dialers dial make multiple calls at a time, only the first one to pickup gets connected to the human the others are just left to ring. When/ if those others do pickup they get the 'dead air. We have FiOS so the caller ID is displayed on the TV, if we recognize the number we pickup, otherwise, the answering machine takes it. A little more than half the calls are legit, e.g. American Cancer Society; Big Brothers Big Sister; Red Cross; etc, still we let the AM take it. Lately I've noticed some of the 'human' spam callers don't realize they're talking to machine in spite of the out going message.
What wold it take to put together a 'smart' answering machine that would capture the caller ID and compare it to a contact list and deliver an appropriate message? If not on the list respond with a more generic message, if an obvious spam, deliver an even more appropriate message.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by marknmel on Wednesday March 15 2017, @12:46PM (2 children)
Done this. I have used Asterisk PBX to create a smart answering machine, Whitelisted numbers get to talk to us (rings then voicemail, blacklist numbers get played a SIT tone). There is lots of all in one distributions that allow you to do this. You'll need an old pc or RPi, and an ATA (analog telephone adapter). ATA's are about $50.
There is nothing that can't be solved with one more layer of indirection.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by shipofgold on Wednesday March 15 2017, @01:39PM (1 child)
I did exactly the same thing as I realize that 99% of telemarketers and political campaigns use robo-dialers as described above.
As a result I have implemented my version of CAPTCHA by doing the following:
-- numbers in my callername DB (aka Whitelist) ring through to the house phone
-- numbers in the special_action DB get one of three actions:
direct to VM with no announcement (automated messages from the school district),
direct to VM with announcement (people I don't want to talk to)
direct to Zapateller() which gives SIT tone (known PIA numbers like the Marco Rubio campaign)
-- if the callerID doesn't fall into either of these categories then they get an announcement "Please press 9 if you are not a computer". If they press 9 they ring the house phone...if they don't they go to voice-mail...robo-dialers never leave voice-mail
I generally don't mind talking to humans, and if '9' is pressed then I definitely know they are human. When I expect callbacks from somebody I don't have in my callername DB I don't need to add them immediately (ie. a repair guy calls me back).
I must say that this has killed almost all telemarketer calls. I still get the odd call from a Realtor asking if I want to sell my house, or a window washer asking if I need my windows washed, but I figure those guys are local and I don't mind supporting small business (or at least I am not rude to them).
Asterisk runs great on Raspberry PI and can do amazing things if you take the time to learn it. I set mine up 10 years ago and never looked back.
The only thing I fear is when robo-dialers learn to press '9'...then I will need to randomize the digit...I figure I have a few years to go.
When I retire and have time, I am going to figure out how to transfer to 'lenny' and see if I can torture a few tele-marketers.
If only I could get it to work on my mobile.
(Score: 1) by butthurt on Wednesday March 15 2017, @11:42PM
What ATA do you use with your Raspberry Pi?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 15 2017, @04:30PM
You could always redirect them to talk to Lenny. [youtube.com]
(Score: 5, Informative) by anubi on Wednesday March 15 2017, @11:33AM (2 children)
I have been told the telemarketers are using a "Dial Ahead" or "Dial-A-Head". A slang term for a dialer which relentlessly dials one number after another, so statistically someone will be queued on the line immediately as the telemarketer completes his existing call. Every second, the telemarketer is not talking to somebody, he's losing money, so it behooves them to conserve their own marketing time, even if it wastes the ten or so people who end up being called but not connected.
It is just a statistics game. The losers likely never knew who called them anyway, as the machine is programmed to maintain at all times a queue of heads for immediate connection to the telemarketer. The rest were not selected as the telemarketer was still handling a call - so the machine just drops you. There is a whole flurry of fresh numbers being dialed as you are hung up on. Fresh heads answer the telemarketing call. Lined up for the telemarketer so his time is not wasted waiting for a head to talk to. The machine is already loaded with big lists of heads and the number of the head, so it can update the telemarketer as to what head it connected him to.
If it had dialed you, and the telemarketer wasn't ready for you yet, you were simply dropped for a fresher head that may be more receptive to the telemarketing call, as that head hasn't had time to get pissed off waiting for the telemarketer to complete his previous call.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by tonyPick on Wednesday March 15 2017, @01:43PM (1 child)
ISTR being told that there's also a guard time and some simple detection for the robodialler to figure out if it's been picked up by an answering machine, voicemail or fax/modem line.
Essentially a number of calls will be waiting for variations on 'person says "Hello" and pauses' before it attempts to connect through further, and in some cases that logic can be fooled if you answer the phone in certain ways, such as remaining silent at your end.
(Although I can't find a good supporting link for that right now, so my memory could be playing tricks on me here...).
(Score: 1) by anubi on Friday March 17 2017, @05:27AM
Oh yes, that's the reason the "Dial-a-Head" has to call so many numbers. Many people no longer answer calls, have their machine pick up a call, and are hostile to telemarketers, so finding those heads that still grant telemarketers the courtesy of a personally answered call is quite rare.
In order to maximize profit, heads do not cost anything to dial, but time costs a lot, so its worth it to burn through dozens of heads to get one delivered in a timely manner to the telemarketer.
Even as the telemarketer is handed a fresh lead by his Dial-a-Head, its already dialing up scores of new heads, as the head it just connected to the marketer is very apt to say "No thank you" and immediately hang up.
Its not profitable having the telemarketer to have to wait for reconnection to another head, so the machine stays busy dialing number after number, in rapid succession, to minimize the idle time of the telemarketer. All the heads that were dialed but not used was just blowby in a nearly infinite universe of heads in the database. Besides, they are available for use again as soon as the machine cycles through the several hundred thousand numbers on its list.
I understand there are bits in the database for numbers which have ever been answered by a human, as well as "naughty bits" for people to avoid - that is people who abuse the privilege of being presented with a telemarketing business call by deliberately toying with the telemarketer just for the fun of it.
It costs nothing to try even dead numbers over and over and over, as eventually that number will be reassigned and some head may answer it. Once answered, the telemarketer may have bad data, but he's gonna make money by just updating the database if he can talk the head that answered into providing the correct info so the database can be updated.
Heads are like sand being processed for little nuggets of gold ... a head that said "yes".
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 1) by ankh on Thursday March 16 2017, @07:28PM (1 child)
> hangup robocalls
I'm told this is done to assemble a list of "valuable phone numbers where someone will answer the phone" for resale.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Friday March 17 2017, @05:31AM
I have the same info... about those "Dial-a-Head" machines... once you answer the call, you are logged as an answered line.
No sooner than you answered and said "Hello?", bits were flipped in the database.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by mth on Wednesday March 15 2017, @11:16AM (4 children)
It is ridiculous that caller ID spoofing is so easy. I understand that some organizations have legitimate reasons to report a different number than they're calling from, but there should at least be some kind of check that the number reported is owned by the caller. When these systems were designed that may have been too complex for the technology of the day, but there is no good reason not to implement some sanity checks today.
I know this is not the answer you were looking for, but I've read so many stories about phone fraud and spam that I don't think going after any singular offender is going to improve things much.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Arik on Wednesday March 15 2017, @12:32PM
Nope. Simply no reason to do so.
Phone companies make lots of money from telemarketers and telescammers. You expect the phone company to work against their best customers?
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by MrGuy on Wednesday March 15 2017, @01:04PM (2 children)
The incoming chairman of the FCC recently proposed new restrictions [arstechnica.com] that would address spoofed ID robocalls.
An NPRM (Notification of Proposed Rulemaking), which is the first step in putting new regulations in place, is currently pending. [fcc.gov]
I don't agree with the new FCC Chairman on much, but this seems right on to me.
(Score: 4, Informative) by martyb on Wednesday March 15 2017, @09:16PM (1 child)
I saw that story on ARS. It sounded good, but the comments tore it apart... basically, telemarketers would be forbidden from using invalid phone numbers for caller id. So, instead of seeing: (000) 000-0000 (as just one example of an obviously spoofed caller id), you would see only valid-format phone numbers. So, the simplest workaround is to provide a caller id spoofed to match your area code and exchange and then use a random 4-digit number at the end. There is NO requirement, as far as I can tell, that they number presented needs to be their phone number; just a valid phone number. :(
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Wednesday March 15 2017, @10:01PM
I saw that story on ARS. It sounded good, but the comments tore it apart... basically, telemarketers would be forbidden from using invalid phone numbers for caller id. So, instead of seeing: (000) 000-0000 (as just one example of an obviously spoofed caller id), you would see only valid-format phone numbers. So, the simplest workaround is to provide a caller id spoofed to match your area code and exchange and then use a random 4-digit number at the end. There is NO requirement, as far as I can tell, that they number presented needs to be their phone number; just a valid phone number. :(
I've already seen this. Most of the time, the scammers use an out of town area code, but now and again I'll get a few calls in a row from a local number. It's the same scam, just different spoofed (valid) numbers. :( indeed.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2, Interesting) by marknmel on Wednesday March 15 2017, @11:25AM (3 children)
This is a problem. The telemarketers try real hard to catch you, so that generally is at supper time - to maximize their catch. I had enough and implemented Asterisk as a small home PBX on some fairly power efficient gear. I have a number white-list for friends and family, blacklist for 800,866,855,etc, and for everyone else - I use an auto attendant. ie. Press 1 for me, 2 for the Mrs.
Most telemarketer rigs can't deal with the keypress and need to abandon the call. I'd say that over the last 10 years since the system has been in use, less then 5 telemarketers have actually broken through and pressed a key - and those are local businesses that don't have a contractor for telemarketing. One of my best geeky projects ever, and it has a huge WAF. :-)
There is nothing that can't be solved with one more layer of indirection.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Wednesday March 15 2017, @11:45AM (2 children)
Wonder if the asterisk is suitable for a Raspberry Pi? Or is there cheap pre-packaged telephone "private PBX" systems out there which serve as base stations serving several wireless phones - that have whitelist/blacklist and configurable answering protocols like asterisk?
I get so many telemarketers on my phone that I end up sending them *all* to voicemail, then later return only those I recognize. ( I am retired and not in business to speak of, so not that many people call me that I really want to talk to anyway. 99% of the time I answer a live call, I wish I had not done that. )
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2, Informative) by marknmel on Wednesday March 15 2017, @12:33PM
Happy belated Pi day.
Asterisk is fast enough on a Rpi, as long as you don't need to transcode - for instance G711u to GSM.
I don't generally transcode - but I do end to end G711u. I use a voip carrier and ported my number there, but for a time I used POTS with a SPA3102. It worked generally well. I believe there are distributions pre-built, just flash and boot.
There is nothing that can't be solved with one more layer of indirection.
(Score: 5, Informative) by shipofgold on Wednesday March 15 2017, @01:42PM
http://www.raspberry-asterisk.org/ [raspberry-asterisk.org]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bradley13 on Wednesday March 15 2017, @11:42AM (1 child)
If you want a serious suggestion, the best I can come up with is this: Find out if some enforcement agency - FCC, or maybe even the local police - is interested in pursuing this case. If they are, then offer yourself as a willing victim. I.e., under the direction of the enforcement folks, you would then take the next call, and cooperate with the scammers, in hopes of identifying the actual organization behind the calls.
I agree with other commenters here: It would be technically pretty easy for the phone companies to eliminate spoofing. The fact that this is still a problem shows that they earn good money from this stuff.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by anubi on Wednesday March 15 2017, @11:48AM
They sure fixed the problem about the blue-boxes pretty fast, didn't they!
The phone company *can* be quite nimble if the shoe is on the other foot.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 1) by anubi on Wednesday March 15 2017, @12:06PM (10 children)
It will take some doing from all of us, but there is a lot more of us than them. So if you get a telemarketer's call... and we really want to put an end to this. Waste His Time.
This will make telemarketing so prohibitively expensive they will stop doing it.
However, the drawback is that you may get a bunch of stuff you did not order, but the telemarketer you try to hold accountable shows his phone record where you were connected to him for 45 minutes. and claims you ordered the thing. We all know the ease of editing media files. And unless we have duplicate recordings of the telemarketing business call, we might not be able to defend ourselves against a claim by a telemarketing business backed up by a shimmied call monitor file.
Or worse yet, the telemarketer may get even with you for deliberately taking up his time that he puts YOUR number on his spoofed caller-ID so YOU end up with all the ire of all the hangup calls.
So far, I haven't had the guts to deal with these telephonic pains in the arse, so I end up routing all my calls to voicemail, and occasionally check up on what showed up and return those I recognize.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 1) by ewk on Wednesday March 15 2017, @12:37PM (3 children)
Just answer: "Ooh.. that sounds interesting, can you hold one minute, I just have to put the baby in bed..."
And continue with your usual tasks (which may or may not include putting the baby in bed :-) ).
Eventually they will get the (non-)message and hang up.
It nicely takes care off 'accidentally' ordering stuff as well.
I don't always react, but when I do, I do it on SoylentNews
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 15 2017, @03:13PM (1 child)
> ... the baby in bed
Careful, this might result in a baby bed being delivered to your house...!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 15 2017, @04:52PM
Back in the day when I still had a land line the way I would handle this is that I would politely say "Could you please hold for just a minute?" Then I would set the phone down and let them stew until they decided to hang up. Sometimes I would come back a minute or two later and say "I'm really sorry about that. Could you please hang on for another minute?" Lather, rinse, repeat until they decided to hang up. Yes, I am totally evil.
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Wednesday March 15 2017, @08:50PM
Just answer: "Ooh.. that sounds interesting, can you hold one minute, I just have to put the baby in bed..."
Why not just ask them to talk about their stuff? These guys have verbal diarhea anyway. But ask them to talk very slowly and loud "because you are a bit deaf".
If you have the time, listen to the finish, perhaps prompting them for more, and then say that they really need to speak to your wife/husband/bum-boy, "fetch" them to the phone (change your voice) and ask for it all again.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by MrGuy on Wednesday March 15 2017, @01:15PM
The problem is that it will take some doing from ALL of us. To some degree, this is like saying the solution to spam product advertisements is for all of us to agree to ignore it.
The people savvy enough to avoid these scams, and the people who might know that "waste their time" is an option, are not the target audience.
We have a little more "leverage" with robocalls to help other people out than we do with spam, since just ignoring spam doesn't hurt the spammer at all, where picking up a robocall wastes their resources. But the robocaller can always hang up if they suspect you're wasting their time, and move on.
Ultimately, as long as there are victims who will respond to these calls and will actually hand over money (or personal details that a scammer can convert into money), they will likely continue.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by shipofgold on Wednesday March 15 2017, @01:49PM
I do this on occasion when I am bored, but the problem is that wasting his time generally is a waste of my time. I normally don't have 45 minutes to string them along.
Before I setup my Asterisk box to avoid them, I use to do "hold on for a second" and log how long it took for them to hang up. Most bailed at around 90 seconds. A couple went to 3-4 minutes after asking "helloooo are you there" to which I would respond: 'yep...just a sec'.
The problem is the grunts at the other end of the call are in most cases just trying to earn a living. There are the occasional malicious ones (This is the IT department and we have detected a problem with your computer), but they are few and far between.
These days I just filter with asterisk and "please press 9 if you are not a computer".
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Wednesday March 15 2017, @01:50PM (2 children)
It will take some doing from all of us, but there is a lot more of us than them. So if you get a telemarketer's call... and we really want to put an end to this. Waste His Time.
This will make telemarketing so prohibitively expensive they will stop doing it.
I already do this, but it won't change much even if we all do it.
I get calls from "telemarketers" on a pretty regular basis. But these folks don't want to sell me anything. They are scammers looking for credit card info and other PII.
It's very rare that I receive a call from a legitimate telemarketer that's actually trying to sell a product or service. I think that's mostly because I placed my phone number on the "Do Not Call" list [donotcall.gov]. That restricts most legitimate telemarketers from calling, as they don't want to be fined for calling someone on the list.
[N.B. I know, I know, the do not call list is just another example of illegal, crippling big government "regulation" designed to suck the life out of small businesses. It guts the entire idea of freedom, if businesses can't reach into your home to try to sell you things, we're all going to die slow painful deaths in the poorhouse.]
But I digress. When I do receive these "telemarketing" robocalls (usually it's either "let's reduce the interest rates on your credit cards" or "you've been selected for a free cruise!" or suchlike), the goal for these scammers is for me to give up my credit card info.
Depending on how much time and patience I have at the moment, I'll generally wait a moment or two to be connected to a live person (if they're talking to me, they aren't trying to scam someone else), and give bland, pleasant (and fake) responses to their questions.
When we get to the big moment (or before, if I'm bored or in a rush) and I'm asked for my credit card info, I take one of two tacks:
1. If the scammer is male, I point out quite earnestly that "when I was fucking your wife last night, she didn't mention anything about this." and then describe other sex acts with their spouse until they lose their cool and hang up or I get bored and hang up.
2. If the scammer is female, I make the (objectively true) statement that they "should go back to turning tricks, as it's more honest work." and continue along those lines until I get bored or they hang up.
However, the drawback is that you may get a bunch of stuff you did not order, but the telemarketer you try to hold accountable shows his phone record where you were connected to him for 45 minutes. and claims you ordered the thing. We all know the ease of editing media files. And unless we have duplicate recordings of the telemarketing business call, we might not be able to defend ourselves against a claim by a telemarketing business backed up by a shimmied call monitor file.
Again, the do not call list is probably the most helpful for "legitimate" telemarketers who actually have a product or service to sell. The scammers won't respect the do not call list since they're engaged in wire fraud [wikipedia.org], for which the penalties are much more severe than calling someone on the do not call list.
Or worse yet, the telemarketer may get even with you for deliberately taking up his time that he puts YOUR number on his spoofed caller-ID so YOU end up with all the ire of all the hangup calls.
So far, I haven't had the guts to deal with these telephonic pains in the arse, so I end up routing all my calls to voicemail, and occasionally check up on what showed up and return those I recognize.
I think you've got the right idea. These folks generally won't leave a voicemail, and if the call is something legitimate, they'll leave a voicemail and you can (at your discretion) call them back at your leisure.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Wednesday March 15 2017, @08:57PM (1 child)
When ... I'm asked for my credit card info, I take one of two tacks:
Why not give them fake credit card info? Like this [google.co.uk]. Then they will waste even more of their time later when they try to apply it.
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Wednesday March 15 2017, @09:08PM
When ... I'm asked for my credit card info, I take one of two tacks:
Why not give them fake credit card info? Like this. Then they will waste even more of their time later when they try to apply it.
I tried that. These guys are pretty well organized and will check the card for validity on the spot.
So now I just waste their time and then insult them.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by fubari on Wednesday March 15 2017, @05:58PM
Case study: How to deal with a Telemarketer by Tom Mabe [youtube.com]
Give it 40 seconds, it may change your life :-)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday March 15 2017, @12:20PM (9 children)
If this is a smart phone, you can use an app like "Should I Answer?" that keeps a user database of legitimate vs telemarketer numbers - granted if the spoofers are truly random all this will tell you is "unknown" vs a whitelist, but it seems to work really well against the telemarketers that call me.
If you want to play, make up a fake identity and engage with them as if you are interested in their product, get enough identity out of them to potentially make a payment to them, then use that to file a complaint.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Wednesday March 15 2017, @12:46PM (4 children)
Not going to get much identity out of them if they just ask for a charge card number. It won't even show up on your bill if you give the a fake one. And who's to say they aren't giving you fake identity information too?
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Wednesday March 15 2017, @12:51PM
The ones providing real identity information probably aren't fraudulent.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday March 15 2017, @01:37PM (2 children)
If they expect you to give a charge card number without identifying themselves, then they really are fishing for suckers.
As someone else said, you could work with an enforcement agency, give them a honey-pot card (attached to a free to open Capital One bank account with $2 in it), and play other games.
Far easier to just answer calls from your whitelist and let others go to voice mail.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 15 2017, @02:25PM
Why go to the trouble to set up a Capital One account when you can just use one of the many ones that Wells Fargo already opened up on your behalf?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 15 2017, @02:30PM
Had a debt collector on me for a few years. They would call, refuse to identify themselves, but demand my social security number. I only know it was them and not some scam (well, not that they aren't part of the scam we call free market medicine anyway) because they didn't spoof their caller ID.
I truly don't get the mindset of people who hire call centers to behave this way. Amazingly stuff like that isn't always a scam. Just some cocaine snorting master of the universe who thinks that the same high-pressure tactics will work over the phone and demands that the call center providing the staffing go against every best practice.
Then they always complain about the bill being too high and the low closing rate, which always leads to the psychological abuse bullying game about how stupid and incompetent and uneducated the operators are and how inept management is for giving them jobs. Dipshits.
Working in a call center was probably the only thing that could have turned me from a hard-core free market into a leftist socialist. Just seeing the abuse and mind games from the masters of the universe made me physically ill some days.
(Score: 2) by dyingtolive on Wednesday March 15 2017, @01:38PM (3 children)
Who actually gets junk calls on their cell phone anyway? I don't think I get any other than from the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and Charter, both begging for more money. I have them set to block on my phone. Only calls I've had for years are from the doctor's office and people who I actually want to talk to.
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 1) by WillR on Wednesday March 15 2017, @02:57PM
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday March 15 2017, @03:59PM
It used to be quieter, there are some nifty penalties you can collect if you bother with small claims court - and debt collectors are required to post a bond to operate in most states - so your $500 per instance judgements can be collected from that, but there are probably much easier ways to make money. Once long ago I had a debt collector call on my cell phone (we had recently given up on landlines) - the minute I mentioned that they were calling on a cell line and I hadn't given them permission to do so, they went away and never came back (the disputed debt was 6 years and 10 months old at the time, so not too shocking that they finally gave up.)
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by Weasley on Wednesday March 15 2017, @07:38PM
I was getting two different scammers calling me once every week or two. I had to change my number to get rid of them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 15 2017, @12:42PM
It seems that something is fundamentally broken with the current phone system, if this spoofing is even possible.
Every
business owner/job creatorcocaine snorting master of the universe wants their call center to spoof the origin of even legitimate outbound calls.(Score: 3, Funny) by DavePolaschek on Wednesday March 15 2017, @12:49PM (1 child)
I don't have a landline any more, so most of the time I deal with telemarketer calls by having my cell-phone not ring if the number isn't in my directory (the default ringtone is silence - I set a ringtone when I create a new contact).
But I was recently driving across the country and got a telemarketer call while I was in the middle of Nebraska. Being bored, I answered. And spent nearly 40 miles talking to them, asking about the details of their offer, sounding very enthusiastic, and basically keeping them on the line as long as possible. When asked for my credit card information, I would try to come up with another question to clarify some point the telemarketer / scammer had brought up. Finally, I ran out of questions, and had used up all of my "Could you repeat that? I'm driving through Nebraska, and my connection is kinda spotty." cards and when asked for my credit card number, I replied, "Sorry, I'm driving and can't get to my card right now. Can you give me a number to call you back at when I get to a rest-stop?"
In any case, the caller had finally had enough. I guess a half-hour was the most they were willing to spend, and they hung up on me. But the interesting part is that the number of calls I've gotten since then has been way down. Maybe it's just a blip in the statistics, but I'm sure hoping it's because someone set a "pain in the ass" bit on my profile.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 15 2017, @02:59PM
In any case, the caller had finally had enough. I guess a half-hour was the most they were willing to spend, and they hung up on me. But the interesting part is that the number of calls I've gotten since then has been way down. Maybe it's just a blip in the statistics, but I'm sure hoping it's because someone set a "pain in the ass" bit on my profile.
Many of the scams are really coming out of a small number of call centers so once you annoy one into submission you'll see a massive decrease in calls. The last time I was getting these (around the same time every day, never leaves a voice mail, etc.) I was out mowing the lawn so I answered it and then put the phone next to the lawnmower engine for half a minute. They never bothered me again.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 15 2017, @12:55PM
No solution there either, except fascist whitelists that only accept 5 or 6 fake news suppliers in the world.
Looks like it must be a fairly common occurrence but perhaps changing your phone # might help retain your sanity.
The technical system is broken and it's enabled by the broken legal system. Follow the money.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Snospar on Wednesday March 15 2017, @01:01PM (3 children)
A couple of years ago I bought one of these [truecall.co.uk] and it has reduced my nuisance calls to almost zero while always letting legitimate callers through. If the incoming number is on the whitelist the phone rings as normal (it will take a message if we don't pick up); for other numbers it will either drop the call (if on the blacklist or sending no number) or it will tell the caller we are "call screening" and ask them to state their name if the call is valid - this fools most machines as they don't interact. If the call is valid and they tell the machine their name then my phone rings with a message that someone is calling, I can then choose to answer/ignore/whitelist/blacklist as appropriate.
It's not a cheap bit of kit, and UK only I think, but it is very easy to use and as I work from home and was getting 5-6 junk calls per day I think it has covered its costs.
Huge thanks to all the Soylent volunteers without whom this community (and this post) would not be possible.
(Score: 2) by gidds on Wednesday March 15 2017, @02:01PM (1 child)
I use one of the BT phones with that built-in.
It's pretty good overall.
It's not 100%. For example, I often get calls from a family member whose workplace sends no ID. So I can't just block calls with no ID. Similarly, I occasionally get calls from my employer's office in another country, so I shouldn't block international calls.
Still, just being able to block individual numbers has cut my unwanted calls to almost nothing. (Registering with the Telephone Preference Service [tpsonline.org.uk] also helped.)
[sig redacted]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 15 2017, @04:22PM
I use a Panasonic wireless phone with good success. It blocks up to 250 numbers and can block area codes. It takes some work to build the block list but now very few get through. I add the unwanted callers to a call group called scammers and cid a scam. That way I know they've called before. You can block the first ring. I have used Digitone with success til it broke.
(Score: 2) by e_armadillo on Wednesday March 15 2017, @07:51PM
Interesting, but they are calling my cell-phone.
"How are we gonna get out of here?" ... "We'll dig our way out!" ... "No, no, dig UP stupid!"
(Score: 3, Touché) by opinionated_science on Wednesday March 15 2017, @01:37PM (1 child)
put that on your number. If it fails the "do I know this person", they get a load of fax noise.
I have yet to get a junk fax...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 15 2017, @03:30PM
We still have a fax machine on a dedicated land line (for use by older folks that don't use computers). Junk faxes are a fact of life, might be one or two a week for many years now -- some are for cruises, listings in fake "Who's Who" directories, or real estate offers.
When I know the fax isn't going to be used for awhile (for example, after tax season is over next month and faxes with the CPA stop), I'll unplug the phone connection for a few weeks. That seems to slow them down for awhile.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Kromagv0 on Wednesday March 15 2017, @01:39PM (5 children)
I would send off a complaint to my state's Attorney General and include as much information as I could. The phone company has more information on the caller than is provided by caller ID and will provide it to law enforcement. That can be used to track it back to the originator who unfortunately will likely be in China, India, or Pakistan. Parasites like these and other dodgy companies like bottom of the barrel debt collectors need a scorched earth approach.
Last year I had a bottom of the barrel debt collector that called constantly from a fixed number but with fake caller ID info and never had anyone on the line multiple times a day. I didn't know it was a debt collector so I started recording the times of the calls for a month. After that I started telling them to never contact me again when I would answer, I would record these calls, and would also inform them that this is harassment. After doing this a few times I contacted my state's Attorney General who informed me that this was a debt collector and that they are allowed to call me in an attempt to collect a debt and that the state's department of commerce deals with debt collectors. Being that the only debt I have is my mortgage and that is paid current I went and filed a complaint with the CFPB, and state department of commerce. When one files a complaint with the CFPB you have to provide information on your self that is provided to the debt collector so that they can confirm that this is your debt and the CFPB sends written notification that the collector is to no longer contact you by phone. Once they have contacted the debt collector you receive a notification that the debt collector has been contacted in writing. A day after submitting my complaint I received confirmation from the CFPB that the debt collector was contacted in writing but I continued to receive calls for 2 more days. Each time I was called I filed a new complaint with the CFPB, state department of commerce, and state Attorney General as at this point the company is breaking the law and in each case received notification that the company was contacted again by the CFPB has been told in writing to not contact me by phone. Going forward several days I get a notification from the CFPB the the debt collector has responded to my initial complaint. Turns out their response was "proof" that I was the owner of the debt but the documents presented listed someone who only shared my first name and lived in states I have never been to. They also insisted that they did stop calling when the received the first notification and that they had never contacted me multiple times in a single day. Did you know it is illegal for debt collectors to lie to an individual, because at this point they have now committed multiple crimes. The debt collector also demanded that I make payment arrangements with them withing 7 days or they would file a lawsuit against me to collect this debt. To make matters worse for the debt collector they provided all of the documentation they had on the debt including the original application, and applicants drivers license. This included all sorts of juicy info like SSN, birth date, birth city, mother's maiden name, drivers license number, original loan amount, current outstanding balance, original lender, etc. This becomes worse for the debt collector because they are legally not allowed to disclose any information about the debt to an unauthorized 3rd party, which I clearly was as I provided information showing that. At this point I went full on scorched earth and sent a letter (registered mail requiring signature and delivery confirmation) demanding the following:
1. That I receive a notarized letter stating that this debt is not my and never has been mine withing 1 week of their receipt of this letter
2. That after I receive their response letter from #1 I am never to be contacted about this debt again
3. That if I am ever contacted in an attempt to collect this debt I will view that as an attempt to defraud me and will immediately peruse criminal charges and they will be named as a co-conspirator to commit fraud
4. They they contact the actual owner of the debt and inform them of their illegal disclosure of their debt information and that the debt collector now legally has to canceled the debt.
Additionally I informed them that I would be informing my state Attorney General, state department of commerce, and CFPB of these further transgression and I will be forwarding all material they have currently provided as well as any future communication. I further laid out exactly what their transgressions were and the multiple places where they lied in attempting to collect this debt from me. Furthermore I pointed out that had their company done their proper due diligence, or even the most basic check, I would have never been contacted in the first place as there are public records that would have proved to them that I am not the correct person, especially given that the first name was the only thing that matched. Two days later I received my notarized letter where the stated that this debt was not mine but they also spewed out a bunch of other crap about their internal process and how they can't be held accountable for their automated systems. Being the dick I am I sent copies of that letter along to my state Attorney General, state department of commerce, and CFPB as well. A couple of weeks later I get letters from my state Attorney General, state department of commerce, and CFPB, all within a couple of days, stating that they have all begun investigations into this company and that the information I provided was exceptional in perusing these actions.
It is not approaching a year and I haven't heard from them again but I do wonder if they ever did track down that guy who actually owned the debt or not. I half wonder if I should do so as I probably have enough information to track him down myself with ease and let him know. I might actually do so just to let him know that he may want to have his state Attorney General look into this company as well.
T-Shirts and bumper stickers [zazzle.com] to offend someone
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 15 2017, @02:46PM (3 children)
You sound like kind of a dick.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 15 2017, @03:34PM (1 child)
Ahhh, but this is the kind of dick I'd like to have on my side!
(Score: 2) by Hyperturtle on Wednesday March 15 2017, @05:31PM
I think he posted about this before; it was good reading then, too, or whoever had done it wherever I read it.
(Also, it's "pursue", but we can let this minor transgression slide for otherwise being excellently documented! No one cited that yet so I figured I'll take the hit to help prevent future errors that pass spell check.)
(Score: 3, Informative) by Kromagv0 on Wednesday March 15 2017, @04:10PM
Good. Maybe if more people were dicks to companies like these society wouldn't have the problems with them we do. And yes I am proud of my ability to be a dick and will use it for good. Just ask any of my elected representatives (current or former), random dick cop I have had a run in with (only 2 of these), roving TSA agents, etc.
T-Shirts and bumper stickers [zazzle.com] to offend someone
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Oakenshield on Wednesday March 15 2017, @03:43PM
I did get a couple more calls a year or so later asking for the same name. I assume the deadbeat ran up more debt or they sold the debt to another bottom feeder.
A few years later, I starting getting debt collection calls for my ex-wife asking for her maiden name. We had been divorced for over five years at the time. Now I have NoMoRobo and I don't get any telemarketers, scammers, or debt collectors. Fuck 'em all!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 15 2017, @08:38PM
If I get an actual human, I practice my Trump impression and mess with them.
"That's a not a good deal; The Donald only makes good deals; that's why I'm rich and you're not. I know you can make a better deal because you are not a looooser like your boss. So ignore your loser boss's instructions and make The Donald a fantastic deal..."
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 15 2017, @08:46PM (1 child)
In 2004 I got 3 landline numbers from AT&T and have had them for the past 13 years.
Mrs Hernandez apparently had one of these numbers before I got it. I still don't know which one......I still get calls for her after 13 years. She apparently was a Republican and had donated to that party, and that party NEVER FORGETS! I still get multiple calls per year looking for her in hopes of donations.
The first several years I told them they have the wrong number and please don't call/take the number off the list, etc. Never worked.
Then I tried telling them I was a democrat...never worked.
Then I tried converting them to the democratic party by explaining the error of their ways...never worked.
Then I tried filtering the CALLERID numbers...you'd be surprised how may different republican orgs are begging for money! Especially when Obama was president. They all share the list!
Then I started donating....$10,000 -- $20,000. I figure they still have Mrs. Hernandez' address and tell them to send a bill for my prompt payment. The agents on the phone are happy...I am happy, and hopefully Mrs. Hernandez is sending them checks. Now that the Trumpster is in office I am guessing they are going to need everything they can get.
My kids roll on the floor now every time we get a a call looking for Mrs. Hernandez.... we started looking forward to them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 16 2017, @08:14AM
I was getting a lot of calls too... as I have a stellar voting record.
In my area, the fact whether or not someone voted seems to be a public record. WHO they voted for, of course, is not.
So I got a lot of calls before the election.
It was a good chance for me to vent steam, as no matter which party called me up, the argument was the same.
I would launch into a tirade ( as I often do here ) over how much I resented the passage of the DMCA, the DRM, the Electronic Locks, and Congressmen passing law to require me being ignorant of that which I am loading into my machine.
I emphasized how much it irritated me to be presented what were to me binding legal contracts, enforced by the laws of physics that govern my machine. But some Congressman does not believe I should be allowed to read it, yet be expected to just take it when all the clauses the code writer put in there come to surface. All of those congress-critters voted that thing in without one peep of the rightsholder thereof being held accountable for what his copyrighted code does in my machine. Yet I am supposedly required by law to accept this thing without understanding it. I ask them why copyright even applied if it was DRM? Why isn't it a "trade secret" because the thing is not revealed?
I would ask them if I were given a redacted contract to sign, would the redacted content be legally enforceable? Well, how about if I sent a Lobbyist to Shake the Hand of an Honorable Congressman, then could I do this so I could get legal enforcement to do whatever I please with other people? Just make sure the people I wanted to take advantage of were Law Abiding people, while the Makers of Law were for sale. Who would do such a thing? And why should anyone call such a thing "honorable"?
I would ask why is it when we were in school, we went through a procedure every day of standing up, facing the Flag of the United States of America, placing our right hand over our hearts, and saying "I Pledge Allegiance - blah blah blah - Justice For All." while my own Congress is abrogating that agreement by violating the last three words of that pledge.
Then I would fire back if they would vote for any nannysack who cared so little for my interests they would actually sign such a thing into law?
I would go on and on and on about how pissed off I was getting over being sold out by people I voted for.
Until they would eventually hang up.
(Score: 2) by martyb on Wednesday March 15 2017, @09:19PM
It just so happens that yesterday morning I was expecting a phone call and answered as soon as my phone rang, only to see that I did not recognize the area code. As I had not yet said anything, I just kept quiet and waited. Sure enough, after about 5 seconds of dead air, the caller hung up.
I get a couple of random calls each week and usually from a non-local area code. I just let it go to voice mail and they never leave a message.
Last idea, play a recording of the Special information Tones [wikipedia.org] but that has become less useful as a result of the use of Telezappers [wikipedia.org]. Still might be worth a try.
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 3, Informative) by RedBear on Thursday March 16 2017, @03:58AM
I've honestly just about had enough with the traditional phone system. It seems like it's become actively dangerous to even have a phone number. I heard about a new scam recently where they say something like "Hello? Can you hear me?" as soon as you pick up the line, and then record you saying "Yes," and use that recording of your voice to threaten you with legal action if you attempt to fight the fraudulent charges they stick you with. How a simple recording of myself saying "Yes," without further context can be used legally to charge me money is quite beyond me. At this point I simply don't answer calls at home from numbers that I don't immediately recognize. Legitimate calls from places like the local clinic calling about appointments will leave a message. Scammers generally don't go to the trouble. If I happen to accidentally answer a call that turns out to sound like a survey or robocall or scammer, I simply hang up without speaking. Always.
As others have noted, the phone companies are clearly colluding with the scammers and couldn't care less about all the fraud going on, as long as they're getting paid for the use of the phone lines. The phone companies will never produce a solution to this problem unless people threaten to completely stop using the phone system en masse. I can't because I have DSL and it's the only valid Internet option locally. But a lot of people simply don't have land lines anymore.
I came to the conclusion a few years ago after attempting to research a way to effectively whitelist my home phone calls (and finding nothing practical available) that there is only one possible ultimate end-game solution to this problem. We need every phone to be answered by a "receptionist" that is highly skilled at holding convincing human-like conversations. The only way this will be practical of course is to use AI systems. A voice answers each and every phone call and then proceeds to string the scammers along with utmost skill without ever giving them anything that's actually useful or any accurate information. In fact the AI should be programmed to give disinformation and keep the scammers on the line for as long as possible. Only if the AI deems the caller to be legitimate does the call actually get forwarded to a real person. One way to get through would be to know a password. Alternately, the AI could offer to hang up and call the caller back at a known, publicly available phone number to verify that the caller ID wasn't being spoofed.
This is a long way of saying that the only way this kind of fraud will ever stop is when it becomes completely unprofitable. Period. You can't make water flow uphill. Every scammer group that gets identified and shut down just leaves an opportunity for two more to spring up in their wake. It's pointless to even try to spoon feed the FCC specific information about one particular scammer call center that probably only exists for a month in some random apartment or office building anyway, before they move to a new location under a different name. You have to get to the actual root of the problem to solve this, which is that people successfully make money off this behavior, just as they make money from spamming emails. Make it impossible to make any money doing this and the problem goes away by itself.
If anyone knows of an affordable phone number whitelisting device that doesn't involve me becoming an Asterisk/PBX guru, I'd love to hear about it. I looked around for a while and never found anything that impressed me. When I discovered that my home phone system allows me to set specific ringtones for numbers stored in an address book in the handsets, I changed the default ringtone to a quiet "burburp" tone and assigned a louder tone to a few "known" numbers. This got most of my sanity back after the bot-storm during the 2011/2012 campaign season. But this was a pain in the ass because you have to populate the address book manually in each cordless handset. Putting in more than a few numbers is just not worth the trouble. I wish there was some kind of better/smarter phone available that would make it easier to add legitimate numbers to the entire system, and allow the default ringtone to be completely silenced (heaven forbid it has a smart option to allow a number to ring through if it calls back repeatedly within a few minutes, like the Do Not Disturb feature on the iPhone). Heaven forbid too, that the phone could self-update from the Internet (just like an AdBlock plugin) a list of known scammer numbers that should be automatically blocked or fed a phone system error tone indicating the phone number is disconnected. All of this together would solve at least 99% of the problem already.
I'm guessing that a lot of this is possible with something like Asterisk, I just don't know if I'm up to the task of managing my own PBX or whether it would be ultimately worth the trouble.
¯\_ʕ◔.◔ʔ_/¯ LOL. I dunno. I'm just a bear.
... Peace out. Got bear stuff to do. 彡ʕ⌐■.■ʔ
(Score: 1) by oregonjohn on Thursday March 16 2017, @07:47AM
I pay $22 a month to avoid these kids of calls, and still they occasionally get through.
I have my cell number which is only given to friends or businesses I trust explicitly.
I have a $22 a month service that uses my 25 year old phone number. I recorded my message, "... Dial 1 for technical assistance, 2 for design services and 3 for other reasons." Any of the three forward to my cell phone. I was once contacted at that number hundreds of times by a valid call for collections but had been sick and unable to consciously function. Those calls added an extra five or so dollars for two months to the auto phone bill but I never received any of them until I looked up why my regular bill was higher ... and saw who was calling (honest collector as I said).
Worth $22 a month? Not really, but the lose of aggrivation is worth while in other ways.