[NA]Robocall Insanity [NA]

Jeff Oslick said:
We just need to find a few dozen cell phone numbers of key people in Congress and mercilessly spam them with texts and calls.
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Oh they’d fix that. You’re just a peasant. You don’t rate. LOL.

Everskyward said:
Same here. Many times businesses will call you back using a different number than their public number because they have multiple lines. Yes, they can leave a message, but phone tag is frustrating too.
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Ironically that’s because they’re lazy and that’s easily fixable... but it’s also why the carriers don’t care much what number you send in the CID field. I have to send the main 800 number for most people at our office (unless they have a direct dial line) as the number they’re pretending to be from in CID.

So my main carrier (who is NOT my carrier for ALL of our main local and 800 numbers) literally can’t give a crap because they can’t tell in a multi-carrier (for redundancy and 24/7 up time) environment what numbers we actually own anyway.

They give lip service to it inside the US. “Fill out this one time form that says you won’t be naughty with caller ID data and we’ll remove your outbound call filters forever.” Took five minutes years ago when we converted to SIP trunks. The other carrier had the authorization to allow it on the ISDN trunks for over a decade and didn’t care what we spoofed either.

All you have to do is say “multiple carriers feeding my phone system” and a form and you’re past the hardest carrier hurdle in the US to being whoever you want.

If you use a third party non main carrier SIP reseller, they applied to be exempt five minutes after they launched their business and the trunks they feed you will never have a filter to begin with. Ha.

It’s way beyond impossible to fix it now. Wasn’t fixable a few years after CID was announced decades ago. Broken system, didn’t assume anyone bad (or even non-Bell owned) would ever have access to trunking direct into L/D carriers. Nobody was allowed to do that under Bell operations without a massive need and lots of paperwork.
 
denverpilot said:
Ironically that’s because they’re lazy and that’s easily fixable... but it’s also why the carriers don’t care much what number you send in the CID field.
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Very true. I used two different SIP carriers, and they didn't care at all what I set as my outbound CID. They did filter things like 911, federal offices, and so on... but I could place outbound calls with whatever caller ID number I wanted. It was useful once or twice when I wanted to use my cell number, but of course the potential for abuse is massive. It is trivially simple to pick a random, semi-random, or "local" phone number for each call, as the spammers are now doing. It doesn't take any special skill or equipment to do it... none. VOIP calls are dirt cheap, and they're free if you hack someone's unsecured or poorly secured PBX system, which is also not difficult. See above, where I said it takes no special skill or equipment; that means there are lots and lots of people running VOIP PBX systems now that really have no clue what they're doing.
 
DaleB said:
They did filter things like 911, federal offices, and so on...
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Interesting on federal numbers, never seen that one. I even got our 911 unfiltered after making sure the number we are using from each carrier (if one is dead and we’re in failover mode) in each city has E911 location data or notes registered that it’s a company system and might be installed in a residence literally anywhere... dispatcher has to ask address...

Central voip platform in the wrong city, 911 going to the wrong city is bad... especially when the phones are sitting on desks in people’s houses, but I can’t fix every possible jurisdiction in all this work from home crap... but I don’t want a little kid calling for help to the wrong State... huge mistake numerous lazy voip implementers forget to make absolutely work right...

It’s an enormous PITA actually. Ha.
 
denverpilot said:
Interesting on federal numbers, never seen that one. I even got our 911 unfiltered after making sure the number we are using from each carrier (if one is dead and we’re in failover mode) in each city has E911 location data or notes registered that it’s a company system and might be installed in a residence literally anywhere... dispatcher has to ask address...
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No, no... I could CALL anywhere, including 911. We just couldn’t set our outbound caller ID to some selected numbers.
 
DaleB said:
No, no... I could CALL anywhere, including 911. We just couldn’t set our outbound caller ID to some selected numbers.
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Ohhh right. Yeah. They’ll filter some! LOL.

I always joked I could give anyone a call from the white house main switchboard number but never tried it.

Messed with other telecom co-workers with other numbers over the years though. Ha.
 
For your VoIP phones try NOMOROBO.com. It works with many (but not all) spam callers. Your phone will ring once with a spam caller, but only once. And you can't answer it fast enough to find out who it was, NOMOROBO will have already beaten you to it. So we always wait for at least the 2nd ring. And then it better be from a number we recognize, or it might not be answered anyway. We get plenty, and we've been on the do not call list run by the feds for 17 years. I'd only turn my cell phone on when I want to make a call, but it is my business number, so I need to keep it on. I'm getting really tired of the calls from Marriott saying I've been selected for a complementary stay. I keep hitting the number to be removed from their list and yet they keep calling. What I need is a 5 year old to hand the phone to, telling him that it's Santa.
 
wish nomorobo was still free.
eats at me to PAY to have control of my phone.
 
Nomorobo is one feature that makes Ooma worth it. Our phone doesn't even ring for blocked calls... and there are a TON of them. We've got our old cordless phones plugged into the base, which means sometimes one ring (from the Ooma base unit) turns into 2, or 3, or 4 from the cordless phones. It's so much quieter now.

We've talked about porting our home number (which we've had for decades) to my wife's iPhone. I went looking for ANYTHING we could use to keep her from getting harassed day and night with the spammers, and came up empty. There are a ton of apps, but all seem to involve routing all of your calls through someone else, making your phone calls dependent on some semi anonymous person or company, and you have no control over how they're handled. No thanks.
 
Unfortunately, nomorobo doesn't support Google Voice.
 
Palmpilot said:
According to their Web site, they are free for VoIP landlines. They only charge for mobile phones.
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Yes thanks
I started the thread about my cell.
The landline is voip (aren’t almost all now?) but hasn’t been as bad as problem, but I might try it.
 
My VoIP landline gets lots of robocalls. Nomorobo only intercepts a fraction of them. :(
 
“Made up of 51 FCC members across six offices, the team will coordinate the agency's anti-robocall efforts and develop new policies for it to put in place.”

Good lord. 51 people. It’s the perfect size. Too big to ever agree on or do anything, to small to be in any way effective.

I laughed at the next line.

Six cease and desist letters have been sent, multiple internationally.

Oooh six. What big teeth you have... false teeth.

LOL. Six. Letters.

Man y’all busting some butt there. Don’t over-exert yourselves. Haha.

Oh yeah those international letters? Straight in the round file. Useless.
 
I had to take shields down a couple of months ago when I started dealing with a federal agency that is often named by the scammers for some back-and-forth calls. At first, I let 'em go to VM and immediately called back and discovered the caller was by then not available. So I had to answer them.

A pox on the scammers. And duly noted that the Feds have found a way to make you subservient to them (and force you to take scam calls) by not taking an immediate callback.
 
steingar said:
Many many times a day. Most ironic thing is most don't say anything and just hang up. I block them all. Been on the do not call registry since it opened.
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I get calls for auto warranties about twice a week. I add their names to an existing contact (car warranty spam) and block that contact. I have no idea how many numbers are in that contact. They seem to use a different number, with my area code, each time.

Is it possible for me to get a 900 number so that anyone that calls me gets charged? My voice mail message would say that if any welcome calls come through, I will refund their money.
I bet if they allowed that they would run out of 900 numbers on the first day.
 
JOhnH said:
I get calls for auto warranties about twice a week. I add their names to an existing contact (car warranty spam) and block that contact. I have no idea how many numbers are in that contact. They seem to use a different number, with my area code, each time.

Is it possible for me to get a 900 number so that anyone that calls me gets charged? My voice mail message would say that if any welcome calls come through, I will refund their money.
I bet if they allowed that they would run out of 900 numbers on the first day.
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You are not even slowing them down by blocking numbers. They spoof the number to look local anyway. Essentially a "generate random valid number with this area code" algorithm. Can use a new one for every call.
 
jsstevens said:
You are not even slowing them down by blocking numbers. They spoof the number to look local anyway. Essentially a "generate random valid number with this area code" algorithm. Can use a new one for every call.
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My cell phone has an area code from 1500 miles away. Any call from an unknown number in that area code gets ignored. There's nobody there that I care to talk to, other than those already on my contacts list. On the outside chance there is a legitimate call from somebody I don't know in that area code, they can leave a voice mail.
 
Pilawt said:
My cell phone has an area code from 1500 miles away. Any call from an unknown number in that area code gets ignored. There's nobody there that I care to talk to, other than those already on my contacts list. On the outside chance there is a legitimate call from somebody I don't know in that area code, they can leave a voice mail.
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That works great in your case. Unfortunately my cell is 1) published on my business cards, 2) local and I've had it for 15ish years-so I really don't want to change it. I'm not griping just letting people know that blocking numbers really isn't doing anything to the spammers and, depending on circumstances, may be filtering out calls you need. Like the above mentioned Federal (and local in many cases) government calls, or even say the Southwest airlines callback that you have to answer or you lose your place in line.
 
jsstevens said:
You are not even slowing them down by blocking numbers. They spoof the number to look local anyway. Essentially a "generate random valid number with this area code" algorithm. Can use a new one for every call.
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Correct.

Until a few days ago, I had a corporate cell phone. I work remotely, and have no coworkers in my area code. I'd often get calls from the dame area code and prefix as that cell phone. Mildly annoying; I can't block all calls or even just calls from unknown numbers on that phone. Fortunately my employer has now decided they are too poor to pay for corporate cell phones, so off it went.

At our house, we'll get calls varying from a couple per week to several per day from our area code and prefix. Mostly those are robocalls, but lately we've once again been getting calls from "zombie debt" collectors for people we've never heard of, sometimes 2-3-4 times a day. We know that if the phone rings with a number from our area code and the caller ID just lists a city and state -- don't answer it. Unfortunately, that means it still sits there and rings... and rings... and rings.

So our solution is that all calls from numbers not in our contact list go straight to voice mail. Nomorobo plays a "number disconnected" tone for known scam and robocalls, and we can safely answer the phone when it rings. Anyone who calls and leaves a message will get called back, and we'll usually add them to the list so their call gets through next time. It's just irritating as hell when we have to turn this off when we're expecting someone to call from an unknown number and don't want to send them to voicemail.

My personal cell phone never -- ever -- gets scam, spam, or robocalls. Never. My wife, on the other hand, gets those and scam/phishing text messages frequently. She's on Facebook. I'm not. Maybe that has something to do with it.
 
The contact only thing works great until you need to call someone from jail!
 
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