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from the No,-I-do-NOT-want-to-hear-you-now! dept.
Robocallers "evolved" to sidestep new call blocking rules, AGs tell FCC:
The Federal Communications Commission should let phone companies get more aggressive in blocking robocalls, 35 state attorneys general told the commission yesterday.
The FCC last year authorized voice service providers to block more types of calls in which the Caller ID has been spoofed or in which the number on the Caller ID is invalid. But the FCC did not go far enough, and robocallers have "evolved" to evade the new rules, the 35 attorneys general wrote in an FCC filing:
One specific method which has evolved recently is a form of illegal spoofing called "neighbor spoofing." A neighbor-spoofed call will commonly appear on a consumer's caller ID with the same area code and local exchange as the consumer to increase the likelihood he/she will answer the call. In addition, consumers have recently reported receiving calls where their own phone numbers appeared on their caller ID. A consumer who answered one such call reported the caller attempted to trick her by saying he was with the phone company and required personal information to verify the account, claiming it had been hacked.
The attorneys general said they "encourage the FCC to adopt rules authorizing providers to block these and other kinds of illegally spoofed calls."
The industry can also make progress simply by using existing frameworks to authenticate legitimate calls and identify illegally spoofed calls, the attorneys general wrote. The FCC should encourage all service providers "to aggressively implement" the STIR (Secure Telephone Identity Revisited) and SHAKEN (Secure Handling of Asserted information using toKENs) protocols, they wrote.
The letter was signed by state attorneys general from Arizona, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin.
[...] The FCC also heard from CTIA, the mobile industry trade group that represents AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, and Sprint. The group urged the FCC to make sure that "carriers... combatting illegal robocalls in good faith must have protection from associated legal and regulatory liability."
A safe harbor as proposed by the CTIA would limit carriers' liability when they mistakenly block calls that shouldn't be blocked. This would encourage carriers to adopt the STIR and SHAKEN protocols, CTIA said.
[...] Last month, the FCC issued about $120 million dollars' worth of fines to two robocallers accused of spoofing real people's phone numbers.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Thursday October 11 2018, @02:31PM (1 child)
There's some customer support costs in the sense of many companies want calls from extension abc to identify as their nationally marketed 800 number not as some rando number that might not even call route back to where it came from.
Essentially PBX designers got too creative about the infinite possibilities of call routing and now that creativity is permanently part of the ecosystem, to most everyone's detriment.
In the long run it might not matter, business phone seems to be dying; it went from something I used every day in the office to pretty much unused given personal cellphones and 9248359258 incompatible text-format messaging systems and of course email and trouble ticketing technologies.
Why would someone call my extension when I'm probably not going to answer but my personal smartphone is with me?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 12 2018, @01:25AM
"extension abc to identify as their nationally marketed 800 number"
Or in other words, use a federally subsidized system to render a fraudulent representation of themselves.
The state is not able to technically and reliably distinguish between commercial and criminal deceptive intent. The state is not obligated to insure the desemination of deceptive intent of commercial interests. Yet the state, facilitates both commercial and criminal deceptive intent in its regulations. The way you know that, is because the system, by default does not implement deception. It is an added feature. And if you read the regs, the carriers are REQUIRED to make this feature available.
If you aren't civil enough to identify yourself in a person to person call, then why should anyone be obligated to be bothered by you? If you do this by mail, it is called mail fraud, and it is a felony.