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from the http://www.archersecuritygroup.com/dont-fall-double-digit-phone-scam/ dept.
Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984
By next year, nearly half of the mobile phone calls we get will be scams, according to a new report from First Orion, a company that provides calls management and protection for T-Mobile, MetroPCs, Virgin Mobile and others.
The percentage of scam calls in US mobile traffic increased from 3.7 percent last year to 29.2 percent this year, and it's predicted to rise to 44.6 percent in 2019, First Orion said in a press release Wednesday.
The most popular method scammers use to try to get people to pick up the phone is called "neighborhood spoofing," where they disguise their numbers with a local prefix so people presume the calls are safe to pick up, First Onion said. Third-party call blocking apps may help protect consumers from known scam numbers, but they can't tell if a scammer hijacks someone's number and uses it for scam calls.
"Year after year, the scam call epidemic bombards consumers at record-breaking levels, surpassing the previous year and scammers increasingly invade our privacy at new extremes," First Orion CEO Charles Morgan said in the press release.
Source: https://www.cnet.com/news/almost-half-of-us-cell-phone-calls-will-be-scams-by-next-year-says-report/
(Score: 3, Informative) by jmorris on Saturday September 15 2018, @08:09PM (5 children)
Not quite, at least not yet. Spammers on email cross international boundaries and hijack windows PCs to mask their origin, making them harder to track. Most phone span originates inside. It could be stopped in a month if the phone companies wanted it stopped, but the call centers are really big customers and almost every one of them does a bit of scam calling in slack times.
Add a short code to report a call as a scam. Three hits in an hour and a human listens in on the next call originating from that source and if it is a scam pushes a button to connect to the originating carrier's abuse hotline, something mandated to be a carrier. Within a month those abuse desks would be really quiet because phone spam would cease to exist. While caller-id can be easily faked, often for entirely legit reasons, often for fraud, the ANI, the account number used for -billing purposes- can't be faked nearly as easily. That number is available to the phone companies, obviously.
It is like what happened with "outlawing" junk faxes. It became illegal, but it didn't even slow down after the law passed because you can't find out who sent a junk fax. Being criminals they ignore the other law that says the top of a fax must have the originating number, they fake caller id and if you call the phone company to find out who to file charges against they politely inform you their privacy policy forbids releasing that information. Because the junk fax farms are also paying the phone company more than you are. And the phone number on the junk fax for the merchandise being promoted ends up being useless too, they swear they didn't send it, blah, blah and people just give up.
If the scam calls really become the majority of calls and people just stop answering calls from outside their address book, making phones almost useless, they might have to throw the scammers overboard to save the billions in cell phone fees.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 15 2018, @09:08PM (1 child)
"If the scam calls really become the majority of calls and people just stop answering calls from outside their address book..."
Actually, I already do this. If I don't recognize the number then I ignore the call. In that case you better leave a voicemail or I'll just assume it's a telemarketer, ya asswipes!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 15 2018, @10:13PM
On an iPhone you can set "do not disturb" on, then mark individual contact list entries as able to override that. The only time the phone even rings is when it's from someone you want to hear from.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by ShadowSystems on Sunday September 16 2018, @01:51AM (2 children)
I second your idea for the code.
It should be made a requirement that the called person can hit *666# & that sends a signal to the phone company that the previous caller was a scam/robocall/etc.
The phone company knows whom called, they have to in order to bill for the call, & they can handle all the back end bits without ever having to disclose any information to the called person.
If ten people flag you as a scam then the phone company temporarily blocks you from making anything but emergency calls & tells you to come in for a consultation.
The account holder then has to come in & sign the form agreeing not to make scam/robo calls again, at which point the phoco unblocks you.
If you fail to come in or to sign the form, the phoco just leaves the block in place & you don't get to make anything other than emergency outgoing calls from that point on.
You can leave that account to wither on the vine & try to start another account (elsewhere), but then you will start the whole flagged-caller-as-scum process all over again.
If you sign the form & another ten people flag you, that's it - you get blocked from making anything other than emergency outgoing calls from then on.
Your name & billing details gets added to a "Known Scammer List" that gets shared with all the other phoco's around the world.
"This person has triggered the permanent scam caller flag. If you sell them service be prepared to have to block them."
Sure they could just resort to burner phones to get around such blocks, but that gets real expensive real quick & will eat up any profits they might have made.
Think about it: having to buy a new phone every 20 calls will hose your profit margins down the toilet.
A normal, residential cell/land line caller is unlikely to get ten flags in a year, so probably will never encounter that 20 flag limit.
If they DO then the phoco can look at the record & see "Ok, it took you nearly five years to get ten flags. You're probably not a scammer."
A scammer on land line, cellular, or VOIP will trigger that ten flag temp cap in a matter of seconds, & then they either have to come in & sign that they won't do it any more (unlikely) or they have to switch to a new line, carrier, or VOIP provider.
And *THAT* is how you stop scam calls, by making it so unprofitable that the scammers can't afford to do it in the first place.
The only reason the phoco doesn't already do this is simple: greed.
They make too much money from the scammers to ever consider voluntarily throttling that revenue stream.
It will take legislation to force them to impliment it, obey it, & enforce it.
Since the law makers are securely in the pockets of said phocos, the likelihood of it ever happening is so close to zero as to be a negative imaginary number.
*Growls, shakes head, & sighs*
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 16 2018, @01:24PM (1 child)
The FTC felt that the law was already there when the set up regs for the do not call list.
Our friends at the FCC just choose to make it a joke.
Both the current and previous FCC declined to support a real caller id so the bad guys can be identified.
The excuse is that sometimes privacy is necessary.
I find this as clear evidence that the FCC is not doing their job.
They are supposed to regulate TV but obviously do not watch enough of it to be able to do this properly.
If they did, they would know about burner cell phones.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Sunday September 16 2018, @05:26PM
No, you have to be able to forge caller id in larger systems. Learn more about how the phone network works and you will understand the difference between ANI and Caller-ID and why both have a place. And while the FCC could certainly do more, the Public Utility Commission (or similar named agency in your State) is where most of the regulation would need to come from and they were all captured by the utilities they "regulate" decades ago.