FCC Closing Loophole That Gave Robocallers Easy Access To US Phone Numbers (arstechnica.com) 27
The Federal Communications Commission is taking steps to restrict Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) providers from easily accessing US telephone numbers. Over the past several years, robocallers have exploited VoIP providers to inundate US citizens with unwanted calls, many of which come from falsified numbers. Previously, the regulations allowed VoIP services relatively uncomplicated access to US phone numbers. ArsTechnica: But under rules adopted by the FCC yesterday, VoIP providers will face some extra hurdles. They will have to "make robocall-related certifications to help ensure compliance with the Commission's rules targeting illegal robocalls," and "disclose and keep current information about their ownership, including foreign ownership, to mitigate the risk of providing bad actors abroad with access to US numbering resources," the FCC said. The FCC order will take effect 30 days after it's published in the Federal Register. A public draft of the order was released ahead of the FCC meeting.
All of them (Score:2)
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Solid 90%. There's still some rural/older areas in Canada/USA that are using older switches, but pretty much anything urban (or passing a major CO) is probably converted to VoIP at some point. The rest of the world is probably fairly similar: upgraded to voip, waiting for an upgrade cycle, or waiting for some cheap used DSLAMs to get retired here.
So, not all calls, but close.
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You say upgraded - but the voice quality and communication content, and especially the latency were, IMHO, way better before.
I must be getting old. I remember when things worked immediately when you pushed the button etc. Everyone has to have way more patience and delay tolerance now.
Re:All of them (Score:4, Interesting)
I think that's very provider/hardware dependent. We get compliments all the time about call latency and quality, but we're also the ISP in many cases and have direct peerings with a number of local telcos. Media takes a short path, and ideally is IP based all the way to the endpoint.
And just because traffic isn't VoIP doesn't mean it isn't switched. PRI/T1 operates on a timer, as did a bunch of older cell networks.
As with all things, ymmv. I do appreciate some of the "old days" hardware though, the reason that ancient Nortel is still running a rural network is because it has survivability measured in Nokia 3310's.
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They do. Poles are hopefully a little too scary for them, but people cutting into any kind of conduit for copper scrap is fairly common.
We've had it happen in buildings & multi-complexes, and just last month a major backhaul to northern Alberta was cut that serviced several providers.
Both times the thieves made off with nothing because it was fibre. But the damage is a costly pain in the ass.
Re:All of them (Score:4, Interesting)
It's iffy. First the article wait VoIP "providers", not necessarily individual users. Also, there are still landlines that plug into POTS wall sockets; they may convert to VoIP down the line but I don't think that's what this is talking about. Internet phones are VoIP, but again, I don't think that's what this is talking about. This change is about accessing US phone numbers in bulk. That makes robocalling easier tha if they just want through all possible phone numbes. The rules won't deter the determined robocaller, but it will make it more expensive or time consuming. The old rules said that just about anyone could access a list of all numbers with no real hurdles. Sounds incredibly naive, so I suspect this occured during the amazing early days of the internet where no one wanted to slow anything down and kill the golden goose.
A bigger problem is the spoofed phone numbers, where callers can pretend to have any number and the phone companies don't bother stopping this.
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There is VoIP, where IP is only used as bidirectional tunnel between phone switches, and the routing of the call is based solely on the phone number. When entering the phone switch, the IP connection is terminated, the switch handles the call traditionally and routes it solely based on its phone number, and then creates a new VoIP connection with new SIP URL or
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Now would be a good time to remind everyone (Score:3, Informative)
Now that Biden has had his appointee confirmed expect to see a lot of this including some rulings on net neutrality.
So next time you get a robo call thank a Republican.
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What if it's a robocall from a Republican asking for donations to a legal defense fund?
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Fun fact, local RNCs are all going bankrupt because they're not important enough to get money from billionaires and all the small dollar donors are giving their money to Trump or scams that look like Trump. The primary season is gonna be wild with all the extra shenanigans since they're the referees.
Good thing Republicans never cheat in an election or at golf.
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...giving their money to Trump or scams that look like Trump
How do you tell the difference?
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They're also getting all their money sucked up because of "legal defense funds" and other legal shenanigans! Seriously, this is not some new conspiracy by Democrats to deprive them of money, Republicans are hurting themselves. They're giving money to the guy who claims he's so rich that he won't need donations, to pay for legal fees and not for campaigns. The local parties have also spend tons of money on boondoggles, like investigating election frauds, recount circuses. And Trump's fundraising in all li
The big guys are still OK (Score:2)
But it's going to *kill* their bench. e.g. the smaller guys at the state level who need that money.
Lindsey Graham said it best: "If we nominate Trump we'll get destroyed and we'll deserve it".
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I'm not talking about political calls (Score:2)
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Republicans are pro Robocalls (Score:5, Informative)
Just a reminder. Republicans are pro-robocall and have voted over and over to make it easy for them to occur. They've also blocked appointments that would have ended many robocallers two years ago.
You can mod this -1, if you're a Republican, but it doesn't change the facts. You're votes cause more robo calls.
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I'd be more likely to -1 you for "you're" vs. "your" but you could at least cite some references to drive the point home.
R's have never been great on consumer rights stuff but working in ISP's and telcos for 20+ years, I haven't heard anything about allowing foreign calls into our telephone networks deliberately. I suppose it wold be covered under the tired old "hinders creativity and invention" anti-regulation mindset...
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the robocall problem should have been killed dead a decade ago.
I believe that was OPs point.
Red Herring (Score:5, Insightful)
Nearly all of the robocalls that make it to my phone (most are now screened out by Verizon and T-Mobile's filters) come from on-shore "businesses". They hide behind several layers of obfuscation but if you peel enough layers off the onion you'll eventually find some US based entity willing to take your money via a US based payment system. I have taken two scammers far enough down the rabbit hole to figure out who they were and successfully sued them for violations of the TCPA. I got $500 from one, $1,200 from the other, not nearly enough to make it worth my time, but it was a fun little exercise.
WTF stops Uncle Sam from hauling these assholes into court if I am able to do it in my spare time? If I can beat them in cviil court the Federal Government can. My victory was hollow; I'm sure it's just a cost of doing business for them. Uncle Sam could fucking bankrupt them. It's also likely there's some criminal behavior here just waiting to be unearthed by a sufficiently motivated US Attorney.
They're fighting this problem with press releases when they have access to the legal equivalent of a thermonuclear weapon.
Congress could also upend the calculation by amending TCPA to allow for recovery of attorneys fees. The damages you'll get out of a FCRA or FDCPA lawsuit are trivial, $100 to $1,000, but if you prevail you can recover attorneys fees. Those will be in the high four or low five digits if they contest the case all the way to trial. There are legions of consumer lawyers that love to take these suits on contingency because it's easy money for them.
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Got a HOWTO?
Distributed attacks need distributed defense.
Re:Red Herring (Score:4, Funny)
Weak do-nothing action (Score:2)
An obvious ploy to make you think something is being done. Self certification is useless, you know it and I know it. Phase out number sharing. We need strict number-of-calls per phone number limits (with rare, and documented case-by-case exceptions). We also need strict ways to report and record scams.