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posted by mrpg on Monday June 05 2017, @01:34PM   Printer-friendly
from the your-call-is-important-to-us dept.

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Frank Kemp was working on his computer when his cellphone let out the sound of Mario — from Super Mario Bros. — collecting a coin. That signaled he had a new voice mail message, yet his phone had never rung.

"At first, I thought I was crazy," said Mr. Kemp, a video editor in Dover, Del. "When I checked my voice mail, it made me really angry. It was literally a telemarketing voice mail to try to sell telemarketing systems."

Mr. Kemp had just experienced a technology gaining traction called ringless voice mail, the latest attempt by telemarketers and debt collectors to reach the masses. The calls are quietly deposited through a back door, directly into a voice mail box — to the surprise and (presumably) irritation of the recipient, who cannot do anything to block them.

Regulators are considering whether to ban these messages. They have been hearing from ringless voice mail providers and pro-business groups, which argue that these messages should not qualify as calls and, therefore, should be exempt from consumer protection laws that ban similar types of telephone marketing.

But consumer advocates, technology experts, people who have been inundated with these calls and the lawyers representing them say such an exemption would open the floodgates. Consumers' voice mail boxes would be clogged with automated messages, they say, making it challenging to unearth important calls, whether they are from an elderly mother's nursing home or a child's school.

-- submitted from IRC


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  • (Score: 2) by edIII on Monday June 05 2017, @09:14PM (2 children)

    by edIII (791) on Monday June 05 2017, @09:14PM (#520987)

    I don't know why you are paying that much. I've got as much experience as you with Asterisk, maybe more, I dunno. The server doesn't really cost all that much money, and you know you can run Asterisk on very little WRT hardware. Sounds like you may only have a channel or two active at any one moment so you don't need call center performance.

    You shouldn't be paying much more than $20/year max for the DID, perhaps another $10/year if you want real e911 service, and calling in the 48 contiguous states is ~2c/min at retail prices. How are you getting to the $250?

    Besides that, the true problem is much simpler. Just block all anonymous calls by answering and asking for a name. Telemarketers and scammers don't even bother attempting to detect IVR/Fax, but just play the message. After the blocking though, we have the spoofing problem. Almost all VoIP providers, including carrier grade, do not correctly populate ANI anymore. So how do you effectively block anything when anybody can be anybody? That stuff in the movies is long gone, and most carriers can't tell you who called you and point you to the headers. I believe only the government has that capability, and it is not based on ANI, but mediation switches designed to suck up metadata for three letter agencies.

    I'm going the other direction with Asterisk. My phone numbers are directly handled by Asterisk and I use cell phones as endpoints in my queues and ring groups. I have DISA providing calling card functions that allow my phone to place outbound calls on the PSTN still using the Caller ID I set, or a VoIP app that just puts an endpoint on any phone, tablet, or computer. My daily work at the moment is with WebRTC creating a SIP client in the web browser itself negating the need for a native app. I'm moving away from depending on cellular carriers and hope to get away from them completely at some point with WiFi being ubiquitous enough that I can turn off the cellular radio, or just use a nice tablet.

    Solving the telemarketer problem on the PSTN requires that we FIX the PSTN. Mississippi is on the right track as they made spoofing calls illegal years ago. As soon as it is a fine in of itself to spoof ANI to represent a number you don't legally own, we can really being to lock it down.

    In the mean time, I highly suggest you look into populating your domains with SRV records and setting up encrypted channels. If we ALL moved away from the PSTN to such setups, we'd be much better off. As well as more secure, more private, etc. If by default people are calling you on unsecured channels, well then you are basically still on the PSTN which is horribly insecure.

    --
    Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
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  • (Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday June 06 2017, @03:28PM (1 child)

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday June 06 2017, @03:28PM (#521364)

    How are you getting to the $250?

    I set up a voicepulse business IAX line like a decade ago and they converted the next month to SIP which was pretty annoying. I do pay as you go outgoing which yeah is just a couple cents and never adds up to much, and I'm unclear how much I'm paying for inward maybe $11/month

    Maybe I can get cheaper but it certainly works well and I don't want the "$2/month webhosting" class of VOIP line, may as well just disconnect.

    With the pay as I go it feels like I toss about $20 in there about every month but I donno. That would be the $250.

    I have four channels available although I've never used them all, its their default service. I think I could pay more for 8 or 16 channels. It is business class service...

    do not correctly populate ANI anymore

    Agreed, but they tend to be consistent which is all I need. I'm pretty brutal so if I/we don't know you, you hit my voicemail I don't even ring. It takes me like 30 seconds to alter my dialplan to permit a new number to ring.

    I'm moving away from depending on cellular carriers and hope to get away from them completely at some point with WiFi being ubiquitous enough that I can turn off the cellular radio

    Yeah you're doing what Republic Wireless and Google Fi are doing as a service.

    populating your domains with SRV records

    I periodically rebuild my infrastructure so if I don't drop landlines completely, I'll look into that.

    • (Score: 2) by edIII on Tuesday June 06 2017, @09:55PM

      by edIII (791) on Tuesday June 06 2017, @09:55PM (#521607)

      Maybe I can get cheaper but it certainly works well and I don't want the "$2/month webhosting" class of VOIP line, may as well just disconnect.

      That's not what I was recommending. For ~$1/mo you can get a carrier grade line. For an extra $1/mo you can add e911 service to it. I've only ever used Flowroute, and I've put hundreds of thousands, if not over a million, calls through them. They're carrier grade. Nearly every time I've had a problem, it's been me and my Asterisk boxes. They're super nice and helpful. Maybe two big issues in like 10 years. Easily three 9's of service, and if my systems were better, probably four 9's.

      I'm sure there are "webhosting" grade services out there, but that is the whole point of a carrier grade aggregator. They review quality continuously, and add and remove routes as required.

      Trust me. You can get carrier grade, or business class, service without breaking the bank anymore.

      I have four channels available although I've never used them all, its their default service. I think I could pay more for 8 or 16 channels. It is business class service...

      I have unlimited channels both inbound and outbound. All they care about is if I paid. They used to have a virtual PRI service which was based on channels and unlimited minutes, but that went away a few years ago. So no busy signal BS, and your systems can always take the call.

      You may wish to reconsider and look into it a bit more. I don't use anything less than carrier grade myself. I'm looking into creating my SRV records so that people could just call me at my domain, and that should result in an encrypted connection. Something the PSTN does not have.

      Please don't cave and let the cellular service run your communications. That's in nobody's best interests :)

      --
      Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.