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FTC to Award $25,000 for the Best Honeypot Design to Trap Robocalls

posted by mrcoolbp on Thursday March 05 2015, @10:46AM   Printer-friendly
from the flies-with-honey dept.

n1 writes:

Ars Technica reports:

On Wednesday, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced another contest to design a system to "identify unwanted robocalls received on landlines or mobile phones, and block and forward those calls to a honeypot." The agency will select "up to five contestants" as part of what it’s calling "Robocalls: Humanity Strikes Back."

The first qualifying phase launches Wednesday and runs through June 15, 2015 at 10:00pm Eastern Time, while the final phase concludes at DEF CON 23 on August 9, 2015.

Here's the FTC contest page. There's another similar contest (with no cash prize) being held "as part of the National Day of Civic Hacking." It appears they have done something similar in previous years as well.

 
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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by richtopia on Thursday March 05 2015, @03:36PM

    by richtopia (3160) on Thursday March 05 2015, @03:36PM (#153537) Homepage Journal

    What would happen if phone calls were taxed something like 1c per call? To almost every user this would be a few dollars a year, but call spammers would see their margins hurt significantly.

    This isn't terribly well thought out; there are perhaps "legit" mass callers out there. Charities asking for donations for example, although I despise that practice also.

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  • (Score: 3, Funny) by redneckmother on Thursday March 05 2015, @05:57PM

    by redneckmother (3597) on Thursday March 05 2015, @05:57PM (#153579)

    Back when I had a landline, and didn't pay for incoming calls, I used telemarketers' tactics against them. The poor shmuck who calls gets paid based on making a "sale", and the longer you string 'em along, the more painful a "lost sale" will be. One poor soul spent 25 minutes on the line before he realized he was wasting time on me. It was more entertaining than watching crap TV.

    --
    Mas cerveza por favor.