Federal regulators on Thursday said they've identified "the perpetrator of one of the largest ... illegal robocalling campaigns" they have ever investigated.
The Federal Communications Commission has proposed a $120 million fine for a Miami resident said to be single-handedly responsible for almost 97 million robocalls over just the last three months of 2016. Officials say Adrian Abramovich auto-dialed hundreds of millions of phone calls to landlines and cellphones in the U.S. and Canada and at one point even overwhelmed an emergency medical paging service.
Making prerecorded telemarketing phone calls to people without their prior consent is prohibited. So is making telemarketing calls to emergency phone lines and deliberately falsifying caller ID to disguise identity with the intent to harm or defraud consumers.
(Score: 2) by its_gonna_be_yuge! on Friday June 23 2017, @09:26PM
About the usefulness of nut-crackers
(Score: 2) by edIII on Friday June 23 2017, @09:29PM (2 children)
AFAIK, Mississippi is the only state that makes using a caller ID that is not owned by the caller illegal. That's all we need to put a stop to this bullshit. At the moment, you need to forward what happened to a government entity and hope that something happens. Even LEO is more or less powerless to stop harassment and it requires lengthy investigations like this to find people.
If we had a RBL for VoIP providers that have high rates of falsification, we could start to remedy it in the same way we do spam. At the very least you could block calls efficiently. Additionally, the falsification is a crime in of itself that can be investigated.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 1) by toddestan on Tuesday June 27 2017, @03:05AM (1 child)
If you want to stop this bullshit, start holding the phone companies accountable for the calls that come across their network. If they don't start disconnecting these phone spammers (and there's no way they don't know who they are), start levying fines against them. Start slapping the likes of AT&T with $120M fines, they might start doing something about it.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Tuesday June 27 2017, @07:53PM
Bullshit, unfortunately. I am operating as a telephone company, and there is no way for ME to deal with the shit coming across my network. You're being a huge fucking dick (unintentionally) by holding me over the fires for anonymous and/or faked communications coming towards me. Would you hold a sysadmin of some other network liable for filtering out excellently forged packets, stopping them from making it to your own network? I would hope not. Certainly not without an idea at least of how to do so.
Disconnect WHO? If you think that the spammers and fraudsters are known, well, do you still believe in Santa Claus? The two stories have about as much truth to them. NONE of these assholes are connected up via landlines. So throw that shit right out the fucking window. The telephone companies HAVE NO CLUE since it is VOIP. Not landlines, copper, COs, and all that jazz... but VoIP. The person who needs disconnecting could be in some place in the Philippines, and that is why they are not all shut down right away. It's a LOT more problematic to shut down an entire VoIP outfit because of other legitimate customers, and that the VoIP company itself is probably not doing anything wrong. All the documentation could be correct, and even a U.S address may be on the bill. Shut them down, or get their account cancelled, and it's a whack-a-mole game. Believe it or not, but they do get shut down often. The little bastards are extremely good at picking up and moving to someplace else.. where they still might use the same number to fake their calls.
From my point of view (the telephone companies), I receive a call intended for you. In all the ANI fields that matter, the FAKED data is present. You scream at me and say that it is a telemarketer call. The most I can do is block it based on the FAKED data they sent us. You scream at me some more, and demand I do something about it. Great. The most I can do (and I have) is to start pushing it to the upstream carriers, and sending them the FAKED data. It sounds crazy, but the ANI moved to the honor system some time ago.
When somebody asks me to investigate something (another telco), the most I can do is verify that my customer placed a call to that number at that time. Truthfully, I need a subpoena or something before I can violate customer privacy. Really, all I can say is that the call didn't happen, and I need to do it in a way that doesn't confirm any details about the customer account beyond the fact that I service the number. What then?
It's a lot harder than you think to track all these things. The only reason the government has the ability to do it, is that they are tapped directly into the main "trunks" for the entire country. VoIP or not, everything is in the PSTN eventually and that means a few choke points. Those being the level one carriers with mediation switches installed throughout their data centers. All of that info is split towards the NSA (The AT&T secret room), and out in front where everyone can see it... the feed being sent to DSCNet operated by the FBI.
Truly, there is very little the carriers can do UNTIL faking information in the ANI is illegal. Then we can complain, and moreover, we can start blocking entire VoIP/Landline companies that refuse to comply and validate their customers Caller ID before allowing it out on the line. Until then, we are all dealing with faked information and no way to trace the lines once it hits the PSTN. I was told directly that there is about zero that I can do about it. Not because they can't trace it, but because the data being used to trace it is falsified or missing. That also means that not only is faked data illegal, but omitting data is illegal too.
It's not that simple to fix the public switched telephone network :)
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday June 23 2017, @09:30PM (17 children)
He made 97M robocalls using unlawful Caller ID spoofing, plus overwhelmed an emergency medical paging service, and they propose a $120M fine. That's only a little over $1 per call. It's not enough.
He should have to pay $10 per robocall, plus $30M for screwing with an emergency medical service. That comes out to an even $1 billion.
If the guy can't pay the fine, keep him in a squalid solitary cell until he does. Make an example out of him.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Justin Case on Friday June 23 2017, @09:38PM (12 children)
to the victims he harassed, plus the costs of prosecution.
Not good enough. Tie him to stakes in the desert sun, and let ants nibble on his flesh until birds come to peck out his eyes. Reincarnate and repeat, oh I don't know maybe 97 million times?
For those who don't need to receive calls from strangers, setting your phone on Do Not Disturb with an exception for a white list of your contacts is the only way to go.
(Score: 4, Informative) by bob_super on Friday June 23 2017, @09:59PM
http://www.sluggy.com/comics/archives/daily/20031014 [sluggy.com]
http://www.sluggy.com/comics/archives/daily/20031015 [sluggy.com]
http://www.sluggy.com/comics/archives/daily/20031016 [sluggy.com]
'nuff said.
(Score: 2) by KGIII on Friday June 23 2017, @11:11PM (9 children)
You would condone killing someone, for this?
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 24 2017, @12:21AM (1 child)
Yes. Disregard of others on this level suggests the person is a psychopath or sociopath (whichever is the right term). In addition to the usual punishment, they should get life imprisonment until they can prove they are not. Without such a check, we are endanger of him doing the same, or worse, due to the lack of morals.
(Score: 2) by KGIII on Saturday June 24 2017, @01:29AM
That's not even how mental illness is diagnosed. I am gonna guess you're not actually qualified to diagnose anyone, actually. Sheesh...
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Saturday June 24 2017, @01:07AM (1 child)
I don't. It lets them off way too easy. I like the other poster's idea about making them answer a telephone every hour, and getting an electric shock each time, and worse shocks if they don't listen to the call and input a number. If we do this to him 97 million times, then that's perfectly fair since that's how many times he harassed other people (and that's just for this 3-month period).
(Score: 2) by KGIII on Saturday June 24 2017, @01:26AM
Okay, then. I can't say that I agree, but you keep bring you. I am not even sure if this is a criminal offense, actually. I think it may only be punishable with fines?
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
(Score: 2) by Justin Case on Saturday June 24 2017, @03:50AM
Not killing outright, but tormenting so much that they would probably die as a side effect.
After all, he tormented millions of people. There's absolutely no punishment a living human could possibly endure that would equal all that he has inflicted on others.
(Score: 2) by deimtee on Saturday June 24 2017, @10:13AM (3 children)
How long to get to the phone, pick it up, listen for long enough to realise it's a useless call, hang up and go back to what you were doing?
I will assume an average of 20 seconds each.
20 x 97000000 / (60x60x24x365) = 61.517
He wasted sixty-one and a half years of other peoples lives. Logically that's about equivalent to murdering a 25 year old.
If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
(Score: 2) by KGIII on Saturday June 24 2017, @03:38PM (2 children)
I am wondering if you've actually had any formal education in critical thinking. That is, shall we say, a very strange use of the word 'logic.'
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
(Score: 2) by Justin Case on Saturday June 24 2017, @08:39PM (1 child)
I'm guessing you, like me, recall a time when words had specific meanings. Protip: that's fading fast.
Now, "power" words are used in hopes of giving vacuous statements more cred. Examples:
Science proves light causes darkness.
That is literally the worst idea ever!
Sensible people all agree we need reasonable restrictions on [demonized tool or technology].
(Score: 2) by KGIII on Saturday June 24 2017, @10:32PM
Valid point. *sighs* I don't even know, any more. They just make shit up.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Saturday June 24 2017, @07:40AM
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 3, Informative) by TrentDavey on Friday June 23 2017, @11:18PM (1 child)
... with a telephone call every hour hooked up to mild electric shock ... that gets more "insistent" until he answers and listens to a pin he has to input.
I've thought about this waaaayyyyy too long for a healthy minded individual.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Saturday June 24 2017, @01:02AM
Wow....
I like this idea.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 24 2017, @12:20AM (1 child)
You're going to need to stack a few more billions on top of that :) Read TFS once more; the 97M number is just for a three-month period. I assume that's the period they investigated in some detail, since the overall amount is stated as a much less precise "hundreds of millions", which is probably simply a projection.
But, for the love of FSM, punish him fairly. "Making an example" is a terrible, terrible approach to law enforcement!
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Saturday June 24 2017, @01:05AM
That *is* fair. He harassed 97 million people, not just one or two.
I like the other poster's suggestion about hooking up to a telephone that delivers an electric shock and rings every hour, and he has to input a number to prove he listened to the spam call or he gets even worse shocks. This isn't excessive at all: if we do this to him 97 million times, then that's perfectly fair I think.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 23 2017, @10:43PM
Hehehehe.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 24 2017, @12:05AM
There are entire websites devoted to pointing out the telemarketing numbers. Why is it at all difficult to track people down who are making so many unwanted calls?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by SanityCheck on Saturday June 24 2017, @02:24AM
FCC is an abysmal fucking failure. Do Not Call list? I get 20 robo calls a fucking day.