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Ajit Pai proposes new rule that would allow carriers to block robocalls
On Wednesday, the Federal Communications Commission announced a new measure that would grant mobile phone carriers new abilities to block the growing number of unwanted robocalls.
The new rule would make it easier for carriers, like AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile, to automatically register their customers for call-blocking technology. As of right now, customers have to opt-in on their own. It would also allow customers to block calls coming from phone numbers that are not on their contacts list. Commissioners are expected to vote on the measure at their June 6th meeting.
"Allowing call blocking by default could be a big benefit for consumers who are sick and tired of robocalls," FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said. "By making it clear that such call blocking is allowed, the FCC will give voice service providers the legal certainty they need to block unwanted calls from the outset so that consumers never have to get them."
[...] A majority of the US Senate already backs legislation from Sens. John Thune (R-SD) and Ed Markey (D-MA) that would make it easier for the FCC to seek financial penalties from robocallers and provide both regulators and law enforcement additional tools to combat these unwanted and illegal calls.
Members in the House of Representatives like Energy and Commerce Chairman Frank Pallone Jr. (D-NJ) also have their own anti-robocalling legislation that differs from what's been proposed in the Senate, but it includes some similar language, like increasing the length of time the FCC has to find and go after bad actors.
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On Thursday the US Senate voted to approave a bill strengthening the FCC's powers to address the reviled practice of robocalling.
A bipartisan proposal, the TRACED Act, was introduced by Sens. John Thune (R-SD) and Ed Markey (D-MA). If passed, it would raise the fines the FCC is permitted to levy on robocallers, and increase the statute of limitations for bringing those cases. It would also create an interagency task force to address the problem, and push carriers like AT&T and Verizon to deploy call authentication systems like the pending STIR/SHAKEN protocols into their networks.
FCC chairman Ajit Pai has repeatedly pushed for carriers to deploy STIR/SHAKEN with little apparent movement, and has indicated that if this is not done the FCC will "have to consider regulatory intervention"
It is estimated that last year alone, approximately 48 BILLION robocalls were placed in the United States.
The TRACED Act, which passed with a vote of 97-1, now moves to the House of Representatives. There it will contend with other anti-robocall bills already waiting for consideration.
Earlier this month, Pai proposed new rules to allow carriers to more aggressively block robocalls.
Hopefully lesson 22 will come to our phones.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by ilPapa on Monday May 20 2019, @06:55AM (18 children)
Show of hands: Who trusts this piece of shit Ajit Pai to do one single thing that will benefit the consumer over the obscene profits of the giant telecoms?
You are still welcome on my lawn.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 20 2019, @07:47AM (5 children)
While I agree he won't, you are missing that this benefits them. When someone makes a phone call, most of the time they pay for the call, not the recipient. In addition, most robocalls originate outside of the U.S. in order to avoid prosecution. Therefore, you have all the telecoms using their resources to route calls over their networks that the people getting them don't want. By blocking robocalls, the companies get good PR by being part of the solution, while simultaneously increasing profits because they have more room on the existing network for real calls, and the stakeholders all get less robocalls themselves. Hell, the telecoms can make more money by selling the robocall solution as an extra feature, like they do with all sorts of other things.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 20 2019, @07:53AM (4 children)
Since you are talking about America, when you make a call to a cell phone, the recipient pays for that. The caller only pays regular termination fees.
If this was Europe or rest of the world for that matter, the calling party would indeed pay higher price for calling the cell phones and the recipient would pay nothing. I guess you would have to ask the Brits if they get lots of phone calls but in other parts of Europe - it's not really a problem (not sure if it's language barrier that helps here too).
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Monday May 20 2019, @09:21AM
As a Brit I know people who get 2-3 mobile calls a day. I don't myself, maybe as I have never told anyone my number except close friends and family.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 20 2019, @06:51PM
Right, we don't disagree and that doesn't really defeat my point. Because most people in the U.S. pay a flat fee for cell phones for a set number of minutes (cell phone) or unlimited incoming calls (landline), the phone company gets the same money regardless of the type of call (most people stay under their limit, according to the survey I saw after a quick Google). Therefore, cutting down on the robocalls lowers the telecoms' costs without affecting the revenue coming in from recipients (as would be the case if they paid per call).
(Score: 2) by edIII on Monday May 20 2019, @07:29PM (1 child)
That is incorrect now. Almost all plans have moved towards unlimited minutes, which means there is no specific charge. For the last few years carriers have been moving to charging for data to keep subscription plans bringing in the revenue. For some time they were falling precipitously because of communications apps using bandwidth instead of phone minutes and SMS. Hence, they started charging more for data, introducing caps and fines, etc.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by Magic Oddball on Monday May 20 2019, @08:40PM
The plans on the major carriers have moved towards unlimited, but that's not the case for MVNOs; those overwhelmingly still sell inexpensive plans based on the number of minutes, texts, and data per month the customer uses (or plans to use).
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Monday May 20 2019, @08:21AM
How about doing the minimum that keeps consumers from complaining while supporting/preserving the obscene profits of the giant telecoms ?
(Score: -1, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 20 2019, @08:28AM (8 children)
At least we no longer have a cable industry and cellular industry lobbyist running the FCC. Oh wait, was that OK because Tom Wheeler was Obama's choice, but Ajit Pai is pure evil due to having been selected by Trump?
Oh wait, Obama selected Ajit Pai too, putting him on the commission in May 2012.
Maybe you're just being racist. Is "piece of shit" a reference to his skin, or to some other attribute of people of Indian descent? It seems to fit your political views, being obsessed with that kind of thing.
(Score: 2, Troll) by Nuke on Monday May 20 2019, @09:29AM
^^^ Found the Thought Policeman.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 20 2019, @11:02AM (1 child)
Asshole
That term just means he is a worthless human being. It is not a reference to his skin or origin.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 20 2019, @11:08AM
Objection, night soil has its value.
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 20 2019, @02:03PM (3 children)
I noticed that too: If a minority person goes to work with Trump, out come the racist characterizations by the Democrat useful idiots.
(Score: 3, Funny) by ilPapa on Monday May 20 2019, @03:37PM (2 children)
All one of them?
But to be fair I will be happy to also disparage all of the cracker ass mayonnaise honkies working for Trump. I'm nothing if not egalitarian.
You are still welcome on my lawn.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 20 2019, @03:41PM
Don't mind the alt-right douche nozzles trying to project their racism on to others.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 20 2019, @07:44PM
And racist.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 20 2019, @02:48PM
He wasn't a great pick, but he did ultimately listen to the public, at least occasionally. As opposed to the current piece of shit that does whatever he likes no matter how unpopular with the American people
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 20 2019, @11:21AM
I trust him not to make things worse as much as anyone else in the government, which is not at all.
If this was revoking an old rule instead of introducing a new one I would gave more hope.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Monday May 20 2019, @12:24PM
I trust that they have allowed RoboCalls to run unchecked for this whole calculated period prior to November 2020, and now they throw up a big PR campaign about how they are "saving us," with peak perceived effectiveness calculated to come in October of 2020.
Pay no attention to net neutrality.
Pay no attention to carrier monopolies.
Pay no attention to unchecked rate-hikes.
It's hard to miss the shitty service the monopoly carriers provide, I'd bet that backroom meetings are working to ensure that Comcast actually tries to make their shit work for the next 16 months or so...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 20 2019, @11:31AM
Make it so that the caller has to pay the cost of the call. AFAIK one of the few places in the world where the person called generally foots the bill is the USA. You'll still get spam calls even if you reverse the charging, but they'll likely be much more considered because now it will cost money for them to make such calls, so they have to be reasonably sure that a rather higher percentage of calls will be to people who will actually listen and do something that will make them more money than they spend by calling. A robocall will probably not be economically viable under such a system.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Monday May 20 2019, @12:17PM (4 children)
No discussion of technical issues yet?
I'm a little unclear technically on how companies are currently trying to stop me from having a default silent ringtone and real ringtone(s) for real contacts?
This works pretty nice. Record your own custom "silent" ringtone if you have to. Its not a big deal.
The first call I ever get from a "real" contact I have to add them as a contact and pick an appropriate (inappropriate?) ringtone. Not a big deal.
(Score: 3, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Monday May 20 2019, @12:27PM (1 child)
They can't spoof my "real" contacts' numbers (yet), but the only robocalls that get through my filters are the ones that spoof a random number every time - and I get plenty of those. They're sort-of recognizable because they tend to mimic my area code and even three digit local prefix, and I don't live there nor keep in touch with anyone from there anymore, but I don't have the patience to figure out how to "silent ring" an entire area code.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by DavePolaschek on Monday May 20 2019, @01:38PM
On iOS, use Exchange Blocker [gentlemencoders.com] by Gentlemen Coders. Blocks calls from your own NPA/NXX by default.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 20 2019, @12:31PM (1 child)
Moreover, how is this feature under the purview of the phone operators? Seems like something you need to implement on the phone dialer/caller that doesn't require operators nor law to work. I sense a ploy to make your contacts visible to the operators.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday May 21 2019, @11:33AM
Yes AC I believe you're correct, this sounds very likely that the purpose of this dog and pony show is to sell phone numbers to other corporations.
My guess is rather than laboriously generating a list manually, they'll harvest your call logs and market a new feature where you get distinctive or only incoming calls from numbers you've previously called. With a side dish of we'll sell this information to god only knows who else in the fine print.
My guess is we're coming up on election season and a secret list of everybody who ever called congressman so and so for any reason will be offered for quite a premium. Along with timestamps to correlate activism and such.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by fustakrakich on Monday May 20 2019, @02:11PM (3 children)
We shouldn't let the carriers block anything. That gives them too much power. Yeah, ok, considering the people we put in charge, that would be the idea, but still...
We should demand the ability to do our own blocking. Why aren't we? You know, we could just quit buying this crap until we get what we want, but I guess nobody can be bothered. So now we'll have the phone company deciding who we can talk too. Eh, peoples' choice.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Monday May 20 2019, @05:39PM (2 children)
One way or another we need the carriers to be involved. They know who is *actually* calling, because they have to sort out the billing. AIUI, if a called spoofs the caller ID information (which, IME, 100% of them do these days) then there is currently not a single goddamn thing the recipient can do about that.
So who can I buy from to fix that? Oh, right, nobody. So have you just given up phones entirely, or do you have an actual, feasible solution?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 20 2019, @06:24PM
Ah, feasible... That's a trick question, because the obvious solution is to vote for politicians that don't owe any favors to the industry, thus producing proper regulation and enforcement. But you know, feasible, nobody will lift a finger, so that's out of the question. Eh, this is what the majority wants. I guess you just gotta live with it.
So I am up for a feasible alternative to majority rule that will make a just society. Can you think of one?
(Score: 2) by edIII on Monday May 20 2019, @07:55PM
They don't know who is actually calling, which is the problem. The ANI system is broken. Out-of-band signalling used to provide information like that, and blocking your own Caller-ID in the beginning was just a flag to suppress information already being sent. That system is pretty much defunct. I have many times already tried pushing an incident up to level-1 carrier with no results. It requires subpoenas the entire way, and each entity says the same fucking thing, "We dunno".
It's funny that somebody said make the caller pay and robocalls will become economically non-viable, because it's already that way. Did they think it was free with the robocallers having unlimited minutes in a flat-rate connection? The issue is that is cheap for them when you can purchase blocks of 250k calls at a time.
There are TWO call legs involved.
- The caller, and their VoIP provider does have the billing information. This information DOES NOT travel along with the signalling information. Caller-ID info is SPOOFED, so the information in the call signalling is fucking worthless. The VoIP provider DOES NOT correct the spoofed information, even though they damn well know the correct number to apply and add to the signalling.
- The callee, and their VoIP provider has billing information too, because in the cases of VoIP the callee is charged. The VoIP provider can only pass along information present in the signalling, and can do nothing more. Furthermore, they already got paid and don't need to go after caller funds, completely obviating the need to settle billing regularly with other telcos.
So you see, BOTH sides are paying, which is the problem. No incentive to push billing info like that anymore, and I've never heard of any VoIP outfit supporting reverse charges. AFAIK, no such methods exist in the signalling at all. Call legs pay their own respective fees and cannot share them. In most cases it's now pre-paid billing and not post-paid.
You would think the government would have their panties in a bunch right WRT surveillance and taps? Nope. That's because they've got mediation switches everywhere and the FBI uses their point-and-click platform to perform call intercepts at will. In other words, unless you have access to those back rooms that the NSA/FBI controls, you can't fight the robocallers. The NSA/FBI are sure as fuck not going to do anything with the illegal surveillance platforms. It's legal only in the sense that they have an honor policy in which they say they don't look at what they've collected without a warrant, and then limit what they view. Complete bullshit of course.
Meanwhile, for the average citizen how do we deal with robocalls? The answer is real fucking simple: Anti-spoofing laws like what Mississippi has on the books. I don't need to get a court order anymore to figure out who is making a harassing phone call. All I have to do is report the spoofing since it is now a crime. That will flow back to the caller's VoIP provider, which will then in turn, cut off the caller's account simply due to legal liability. That, and the VoIP provider could stop them from spoofing in their tracks with an approved whitelist of Caller ID information that can be set by caller equipment.
Once you have that in place, it becomes a whack-a-mole game for a little while during the building of real-time black hole lists for phone numbers. Eventually though, bad outfits will have a very hard time obtaining clean phone numbers that are not already blocked. This period could be heavily shortened if an average callee can report and post a phone number to the black lists. Callers could object, but that would involve coming out of the shadows, something bad outfits cannot do.
That in a nutshell, is why you cannot stop robocallers today. If I can't stop it from the relative insides of the telco's, what chance do you have?
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 20 2019, @02:19PM (4 children)
Aka I don't want to be registered for call-blocking technology. My phone does receive calls from people I do not know that I need to take, which puts me in the not-envious position of having to pick up every call (except when the caller ID is Jamaica...) I end up hanging up on a lot of calls.
Maybe the FCC could first try to publicize that such technology exists on an opt-in basis. (I assume this is something different from the completely ineffective do-not-call lists).
Maybe the FCC could force industry to redesign the system to start forcing more positive identifications (i.e. end spoofing) and start holding carriers responsible for identifying whom the paying customer is. You know... regulate. The job they are supposed to do. The one which both the current Senate and House bills include, and which I'm guessing the FCC wants to try to forestall.
(Score: 3, Informative) by captain normal on Monday May 20 2019, @03:24PM (2 children)
This is the real root of the spam call problem. Allowing any form of spoofed calls creates this nuisance.
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts"- --Daniel Patrick Moynihan--
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday May 20 2019, @06:17PM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by pipedwho on Monday May 20 2019, @11:39PM
We need both provisions to put a serious dent in this scourge.
(Score: 2) by tibman on Monday May 20 2019, @04:33PM
Same here. I'm a point of contact (and emergency contact) on a bunch of stuff. No idea when or who will call so i have to answer everything. The last few years have been the worst since owning a cellphone. Phone companies don't care. If this was email then they would cease to exist because every admin would blackhole any email coming through them. There are plenty of audit tools to track the origin of an email. You can contact the company above whoever sent it and get it fixed. I've had domain registrars just suspend domains that spam was coming out of within a few hours. Phone tech is terrible because someone wants it like this. I can't think of any other reason.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 2) by Nobuddy on Tuesday May 21 2019, @03:35PM
Is to require every number to be accurate. Thats it. No spoofing, no faking- a call claiming to be a number that does not authenticate as belonging to the caller simply fails. End of issue, forever.