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from the records-that-tell-us-your-auto-warranty-is-about-to-expire dept.
The agency mandated U.S. providers to stop carrying traffic originating from the Sumco Panama company and the two people allegedly behind it, Aaron Michael Jones and Roy Cox. Jr., both of California.
The group is accused of making more than 8 billion robocalls to U.S. consumers since 2018, marketing an auto-warranty scam, records show.
[...] FCC data estimates Sumco Panama generates millions of calls on a daily basis.
Earlier this month, the agency sent cease-and-desist letters to a number of carriers to halt the calls, including Call Pipe, Fugle Telecom, Geist Telecom, Global Lynks, Mobi Telecom, South Dakota Telecom, SipKonnect and Virtual Telecom.
"Now that U.S. voice service providers know the individuals and entities associated with this scheme, the Enforcement Bureau will closely monitor voice service providers' compliance with this order and take appropriate enforcement action as necessary," Acting FCC Enforcement Bureau Chief Loyaan Egal said in a statement.
[...] "Billions of auto warranty robocalls from a single calling campaign -- billions!" FCC Rosenworcel said earlier this month. "Auto warranty scams are one of the top complaints we get from consumers and it's time to hold those responsible for making these junk calls."
See also: FCC Orders Blocking of Auto Warranty Robocall Scam Campaign
Anyone know how telephony works these days? Why is it hard to address robocalls and other issues like phone number spoofing? It seems since both endpoints of a call are fixed that it should be easy to tell where a call originates and from what number. Is this a common scam outside the US?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Sunday July 24 2022, @04:55AM (7 children)
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 24 2022, @09:48AM (1 child)
Nice idea, but has it's drawbacks. America had this for a long time but still has issues. Now with 'unlimited' plans anyone can do this. There are laws against it, but they have no teeth.
I've had this done to me a few times now. So far I can't see a way to stop it, even though I know who they are and how to find them.
(Score: 3, Informative) by fraxinus-tree on Sunday July 24 2022, @09:24PM
Europe has orders of magnitude less of this problem.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Opportunist on Sunday July 24 2022, @10:19AM
Just inform the public about the spammers whereabouts.
This is America. With about 10 weapons per citizen. At least one of them will have the right idea to give this problem a lasting solution.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Thexalon on Sunday July 24 2022, @09:11PM (3 children)
This slightly modified old-school anti-spam checklist seems appropriate:
-----------------------------------
Your post advocates a
( ) technical ( ) legislative (X) market-based ( ) vigilante
approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)
( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest phone numbers
(X) Mailing lists and other legitimate phone uses would be affected
(X) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
( ) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
(X) Users of phones will not put up with it
( ) Microsoft will not put up with it
( ) The police will not put up with it
(X) Requires too much cooperation from spammers
(X) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
( ) Many phone users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
( ) Spammers don't care about invalid numbers in their lists
(X) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business
Specifically, your plan fails to account for
( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it
( ) Lack of centrally controlling authority for phone services
(X) Open relays in foreign countries
(X) Ease of searching tiny numeric address space of all phone numbers
(X) Asshats
(X) Jurisdictional problems
( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
( ) Huge existing software investment in PSTN
( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than PSTN to attack
( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email
(X) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
( ) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
(X) Extreme profitability of spam
(X) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
( ) Technically illiterate politicians
( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers
(X) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves
( ) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
( ) Outlook
And the following philosophical objections may also apply:
(X) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been shown practical.
( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation
( ) Blacklists suck
( ) Whitelists suck
( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored
( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
(X) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
(X) Making phone calls should be free
( ) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
( ) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
( ) Temporary/one-time phone numbers are cumbersome
( ) I don't want the government reading my phone calls
(X) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough
Furthermore, this is what I think about you:
(X) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
( ) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your house down!
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2, Touché) by khallow on Sunday July 24 2022, @09:52PM (2 children)
Then the call doesn't go through. It's not rocket science.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Sunday July 24 2022, @10:56PM (1 child)
If we could find the robocallers now and collect the money, we would be busting them more regularly for robocalling.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday July 25 2022, @02:18AM
There is a chasm of difference between before and after.