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from the fifty-ways-to-beat-your-scammer dept.
US Attorneys General will take legal action against telecom providers enabling robocalls:
The Attorneys General of all 50 states have joined forces in hopes of giving teeth to the seemingly never-ending fight against robocalls. North Carolina AG Josh Stein, Indiana AG Todd Rokita and Ohio AG Dave Yost are leading the formation of the new Anti-Robocall Litigation Task Force. In Stein's announcement, he said the group will focus on taking legal action against telecoms, particularly gateway providers, allowing or turning a blind eye to foreign robocalls made to US numbers.
He explained that gateway providers routing foreign phone calls into the US telephone network have the responsibility under the law to ensure the traffic they're bringing in is legal. Stein said that they mostly aren't taking any action to keep robocalls out of the US phone network, though, and they're even intentionally allowing robocall traffic through in return for steady revenue in many cases.
Recently: FCC Orders Phone Carriers to Block Scammers Behind 8 Billion Robocalls.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Sunday August 07 2022, @04:46AM (2 children)
I wouldn't call it paranoid. I'm a privacy advocate for sure. It's more that I read these "privacy" policies / agreements, and they always say "we value your privacy". What they mean is "your private information has value, and we're going to capitalize on it."
But more seriously (less sarcastically) they often / usually say how they will share your information with "their trusted partners". Okay, wait a minute, who are they? And what is their privacy policy? What will they do with my private information? Yeah, right, we don't get to know that.
It's very disappointing that our so-called government lets this stuff happen. Remember the "shrink-wrap licenses"? You have no idea what they say until you opened the package, at which point it said "by opening this package you have agreed to X, Y, Z".
I'm encouraged that EU are leading the way in stronger privacy laws, and a few in the US are pushing for some, but it's discouraging how slow the progress is. Why does govt. take so long- years and years- to figure out what's going on?
I posted in another discussion how I'm having problems with PayPal being blocked. I have not changed anything- same name, same email, same address, same Visa card. I'm getting a different response from every "customer service" person I interact with. One said something about them not having my phone number. There's a bogus number in there- I did not put one in! They say you can delete the number, but guess what, there's no possible delete. You can change it, but not delete. So now they're demanding my actual bank account info. Who is stupid enough to spread that info around? They say "it's for my "security"". WTF! How am I more secure with my bank account info copied who knows where? I've told them exactly that, and that I will never give them my bank account info, and I will just use other forms of payment, and certainly buy online much less. Good old stores still exist and work well.
And from another rant I posted somewhere on SN, how is it a "contract" when they put "we reserve the right to change the terms of this contract..."?
It's a never-ending fight. We're all battle-weary. Please, Congress and other leaders, please end all of this spying, voyeurism, liquid "contracts", and selling our private information.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anartech Systems on Monday August 08 2022, @12:08PM (1 child)
> General government rantings
The reason they allow this and it takes so long is simple. For better or worse, these mega corps keep the economy running. Billions of taxable dollars spent by the useful idiots on cheap plastic shite which lasts just beyond it's warranty (assuming you aren't coerced into replacing a perfectly good device because FOMO, which has been Apple's M.O. since they worked out the iPhone), new offices and warehouses and all the income they generate for the city councils, income tax benefits from the sudden influx of workers, there are dozens of cherries on that pie. Look at tobacco and booze. The biggest killers out there, and also some of the most highly taxed products on the planet. No government wants to turn that tap off, even if it is at the cost of both the citizens who are paying their taxes, and the health systems which were already stretched long before kung-flu was a thing. The net profit is greater than the net loss, the tap remains cranked wide open.
The glacial pace is simply to discourage groups without the long term fighting power to actually fight this dross. The only people with the cash and legal backing to lay siege are the companies which are generating the revenue. And the sizable tax breaks they get will make sure they keep their heads down. I suspect this is the reason we are seeing so much unionisation happening in industries that have not historically had it. I like to think the employees are becoming conscious of the impact their employers are having, but I suspect it's more that they are just sick of copping the short end of a very log and gem encrusted stick, and like any good human, they want theirs.
What to do about this, I do not know, but I feel ya.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Monday August 08 2022, @02:27PM
Thank you, you have a good big-picture realistic view and summarize well. I'm rational enough to see merits on both sides of the coin, including politics. Like you so eloquently wrote, the bigger it is, and the bigger the demand is, the less truly free the market is. Although I'm in favor of free-market and free-enterprise for many things, goods and services that are essential to most people's lives need to be highly regulated. Back in the day the monopoly Bell Telephone and AT&T were heavily regulated, and system and service quality was amazing. Local phone service was very inexpensive, but "long-distance" was astronomical. Others (MCI?) wanted to compete on long-distance, got govt. involved, giant boondoggle, broke up Bell / AT&T. Long distance got cheaper, but local service got more expensive, and quality slowly went down.
To some extent phone and Internet services are regulated, but maybe not enough, or not in the right ways. That companies like Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T grow so huge so quickly should inspire more govt. scrutiny and action. But like you said, the whole govt. - corporation machine, aka "corporatocracy", might be too big, powerful, and entrenched at this point for anyone to make significant strides in getting things under control.
My ongoing wish: Internet, including cell carriers, would fall under utility category, and be regulated.
I became very aware of this corporatocracy problem 25 years ago. For all of the reasons you wrote, I'm cynical and have no belief that Congress will ever do much to fix these problems. Little scratches and dents here and there for show, but no real major overhaul.
Case in point: I'm having barely any cell service where I live. NO T-Mobile, despite their coverage maps saying I should have good signal. I'm not sure what to do about it. I called them, they're very nice and said they'd look into it, but weeks later and no change. FCC should be the ones to fix it, but even they say they don't get involved in individual's problems. Maybe, I'll try. And maybe FTC and/or other govt. agencies, but again, scratches and dents. Oh, and AT&T are throttling my Internet speed, and they're fearless and arrogant enough to tell on their website: if you buy a plan directly from AT&T, they promise they won't throttle your speeds. Obviously admitting they _do_ throttle some people's speeds (those of us on 3rd-party MVNO plans...)