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posted by mrpg on Friday September 28 2018, @03:40AM   Printer-friendly
from the bills-to-pay dept.

FCC Hangs Blockbuster $37.5 Million Fine Over Robocaller Accused of Spoofing Real Numbers:

The FCC has announced its proposal to impose a fine of $37.5 million on a company accused of making robocalls and hiding the calls' origin behind the real phone numbers of consumers. The agency is attempting to show that it's cracking down on the out of control robocall industry, but critics say it's too little, too late.

On Wednesday, the FCC said that it was alerted by a whistleblower about the robocall practices of an Arizona-based company called Affordable Enterprises. According to the announcement, the company "made more than 2.3 million maliciously-spoofed telemarketing calls to Arizonans during a 14-month span starting in 2016 to sell home improvement and remodeling services."

Spoofing is the term for using various techniques to display a different phone number on a robocall target's caller-ID than the number that's actually being used by the caller. What makes the Affordable Enterprises case different is that it's accused of intentionally using phone numbers that belong to consumers. This makes it hard to file a complaint against the company and leads to confused Americans fielding angry phone calls out of the blue.


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  • (Score: 2) by Pino P on Friday September 28 2018, @02:54PM (2 children)

    by Pino P (4721) on Friday September 28 2018, @02:54PM (#741352) Journal

    For one, [voice over TLS is] much harder to spoof [than the public switched telephone network].

    How can you tell in advance whether the holder of the keypair calling you is someone who knows you personally, someone who wants to buy or has bought the product/service that you have offered to sell, or someone who wants to sell you something you don't want?

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 2) by Subsentient on Saturday September 29 2018, @12:49AM (1 child)

    by Subsentient (1111) on Saturday September 29 2018, @12:49AM (#741630) Homepage Journal

    For one, you could give out authorization tokens with your "phone number" and revoke them if they give them to third parties.

    --
    "It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Jiddu Krishnamurti
    • (Score: 2) by Pino P on Saturday September 29 2018, @11:49PM

      by Pino P (4721) on Saturday September 29 2018, @11:49PM (#741952) Journal

      How would a user of this system publish a token for first contact, so that prospective clients could contact the user, without allowing telemarketers to contact the user using the same token?