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Appeals Court Nixes Some FCC Rules on Robocalls

posted by cmn32480 on Saturday March 17 2018, @04:32PM   
from the thanks-a-lot-you-nimnobs dept.

"exec" writes:

An appeals court threw out part of a Federal Communications Commission regulation aimed at reducing automated telephone solicitations, weakening a 2015 effort to squelch the scourge of so-called robocalls.

The rule was aimed at calls generated by auto-dialing devices. But its language was too broad, and could be construed to prohibit calls from any smartphone, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled in a unanimous opinion Friday.

[...] Unwanted calls, including robocalls, are the top consumer complaint to the FCC, with more than 200,000 such comments received annually, according to the agency. Some private analyses estimate that U.S. consumers received about 2.4 billion robocalls per month in 2016.

[...] Because under the FCC's rule "any uninvited call or message from the device is a statutory violation," regular smartphone users could face a $500 penalty for calls -- such as inviting a person to a party -- without first getting consent to contact them, the judges said.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-16/u-s-robocall-limits-partly-tossed-out-by-federal-appeals-court

-- submitted from IRC

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Original Submission

• Re:Hooray!Re:Hooray! (Score: 2) by shipofgold on Sunday March 18 2018, @10:47PM (2 children)

  by shipofgold (4696) on Sunday March 18 2018, @10:47PM (#654611)

  Actually, the app for that is Asterisk which runs nicely on Raspberry Pi. I setup Asterisk and an ATA to filter the incoming calls. Asterisk is configured to send whitelisted numbers through to ring the house phones. Numbers not in the whitelist get a message "Please press 9 if you are not a computer".

  A simple captcha that works like a charm...robo callers never press 9. If they don't press 9 they go to voicemail so I don't miss anything like school recordings. Of course this will stop working if the unwashed masses start doing this as robo callers will get voice recognition and figure it out.

  Parent

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• Re:Hooray!(Score: 2) by lentilla on Monday March 19 2018, @08:39AM

  by lentilla (1770) on Monday March 19 2018, @08:39AM (#654760) Journal

  Would you be able to expand on this - particularly the hardware part?

  Parent

• Re:Hooray!(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Tuesday March 20 2018, @12:24AM

  by NotSanguine (285) <reversethis-{grO ... a} {eniugnaStoN}> on Tuesday March 20 2018, @12:24AM (#655205) Homepage Journal

  Actually, the app for that is Asterisk which runs nicely on Raspberry Pi. I setup Asterisk and an ATA to filter the incoming calls. Asterisk is configured to send whitelisted numbers through to ring the house phones. Numbers not in the whitelist get a message "Please press 9 if you are not a computer".

  A simple captcha that works like a charm...robo callers never press 9. If they don't press 9 they go to voicemail so I don't miss anything like school recordings. Of course this will stop working if the unwashed masses start doing this as robo callers will get voice recognition and figure it out.

  Absolutely a good idea. What's more, you can download an ISO of an Asterisk implementation [asterisk.org] and configure it for your needs. Easy peasy. Hardware requirements/recommendations [voip-info.org] are also available.

  Unfortunately, that doesn't help with *mobile* phones. Granted, you can set up white [google.com] (and black) lists on mobile phones, but it's still annoying to have deal with that bullshit.

  --
  No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr

  Parent