It can't happen too soon. When/if it does happen I will need to unblock the 1000 numbers that called me repeatedly. At one point, I wanted to block the entire 202 area code.
Yeah, crazy there is just nowhere to get away from the people that just somehow always feel compelled to chime and tell you what to do.
I get this was a relatively benign comment that im nitpicking , and the recursion in my comment here and all that jazz, but couldn't help but notice that somehow a 2600 reference drew criticism for lack of reference. Almost feels like it was a self congratulating comment for recognizing the reference, but I'm over analyzing at this point
Holy moly, chill. There was no criticism, nitpicking, or “telling others what to do”. What an absurd extrapolation. It was a polite and harmless observation—one that I would have appreciated getting myself, by the way—on a funny comment that requires prior knowledge to understand the joke.
And yeah, you are overanalysing. Despite having read and enjoyed Mitnick’s Ghost in the Wires¹ I had absolutely forgotten 2600 was the specific frequency and had to hop around a few links to recall what this was about. Who would self-congratulate on something so small?
Hacker News is ostensibly about curiosity, so explaining references is absolutely on topic. And being lazy is a hacker trait, I personally dislike when I don’t pursue something interesting because there was no easy link to follow.
The irony in your comment is something else. Don’t assume bad faith.
I'm in Northern Europe and lately spam calls, and especially spoofing from random peoples numbers have become so bad i know multiple who stopped taking any calls, or even changed their phone numbers because they got too many calls, or angry people called them because their number was spoofed.
To me the whole system is archaic - i know gen z would never ever take a call from someone they don't know, or even call each other - it's simply not something you do - it would be like reading your spam mails.
And i'm coming to the same conclusion, answering random people is naive.
I had a huuuuuuuuuuge increase the past couple months (10-20 a day). Almost all medicare fraud scams. They seem to be tapering down a bit (2-5 a day). It's interesting, because they have all my info (where I live, my full name, etc.), but somehow not my age? Because if they knew my real age, they shouldn't be calling me for medicare fraud scams... I wonder if maybe what's happening is that the people selling leads lists for scammers are willfully omitting age information, so they can charge more for a larger list which is not obviously 50%+ garbage scam leads for medicare fraud.
I also had an uptick in text spam (used to be very rare until maybe 9 months ago, then it became about 1-2 a day, now it's back down to just a few a week).
I almost never get spam calls yet I started to receive them almost daily preceding and after the election. Fortunately iOS is great at filtering them. I'd just like a feature to not see them at all, they don't deserve a single missed call notification or unread flag on my device.
I thought my girlfriend had abandoned me. My most frequent phone call by far was from a nice sounding recorded lady informing me that the extended warranty I never bought on a car that I never owned was in danger of expiring and this was my last chance to renew it. Ever. She would sometimes call me three times per day with that message but I haven't heard from her in months. I was afraid that my last chance had come and gone, or that she is no longer that into me. But it's just the FCC coming between us.
I haven't had a junk call since 2023 (aside from political polling) but I receive a fake usps text from international numbers pretty much daily.
google's messages app is pretty good at corralling them into a spam folder but I do peep in there every now and then. I hope that whatever provider is allowing these gets disconnected.
I get very little phone or SMS spam. All SMS spam gets replied to with "STOP", which, for most of the SMS services, is a strike against the spammer. I've been on the Do Not Call list since it started.
Email spam is repetitive enough that the usual Thunderbird filters work.
If a spam email has an unsubscribe link, I click on that and add the sender to the block list. If it doesn't have an unsubscribe link, I try to find out which service sent it and send them a notice of a CAN-SPAM law violation. The usual suspects (Mailchump, SpamGrid, etc.) do terminate accounts for that, to prevent being blocked themselves.
I've started to get spam via iMessage lately which I assume avoids most automated scrutiny that may apply to bulk SMS. Usually in the form of "your UPS/USPS package address needs to be verified" or something.
My iMessage is configured to send read receipts, so I quickly bounce the setting before opening the message to click the "Report Junk" link (maybe it's pointless). It would be nice to mark things as spam/junk without having to open them, perhaps I will just delete them since iMessage has been a malware vector in the past.
I get no calls anymore, but I attribute it to pruning where my contact info is distributed and using the spam filters available on call/text.
My father got (no hyperbole) 90 calls a day, consistently, until I realized why he wasn’t answering his phone. He had used zero of the tools that the cell service provider and smartphone OS made available to him. Additionally, he likes talking to people, so he wouldn’t be “mean” to tell callers/testers to take him off their list.
I tend to agree about the lists. I get a couple of spam calls and texts a week, which seems to be much, much less than what most of my friends get.
My father gets multiple spam calls every day. He lets them all go to voice mail, so nothing about his behavior encourages them to keep calling. Yet they keep coming.
I've had my cell number for about 15 years, and for another 10 years prior it was a land line, so 25 years in total. My father's cell number is only about 10 years old. So despite having a much older phone number, I get way less spam calls and texts than he does.
Part of that may be what lists we're on. Another reason may be that for the past 20 years, when ordering things online, 99% of the time I give a fake phone number. Companies claim they want it in case there is a problem delivering your order, but even before I started doing this, I never had a company call about an order they couldn't deliver. Once or twice they emailed me about an order they couldn't fulfill (out of stock, etc.), but I do give them a legit email. The 1% of the time I give a real phone number is when I'm dealing with a serious transaction, e.g. a bank or insurance or medical company.
That is really good, also because your tracking cookies get bound to your phone number and then market segmentation companies then use your phone number to direct ads to your tracking IDs. To them, your phone number is like your SSN.
I still get regular spam calls and spam texts. Maybe half the texts are obvious scams (make $1000s a day from home reshipping stolen goods) and the other texts are conversation starters that shady telcos can explain away as plausibly harmless (but are likely to be the first step in deliberate pig butchering scams).
About 7 weeks ago I picked up a new AT&T SIM to use for data backup while my fiber connection was out. Never placed _any_ calls and only 1 text to my current mobile number to capture the new number. I get 4-6 calls per day, most labelled "Spam Risk". This period included the last couple of weeks of the US election and the volume then was much higher from what I am guessing was robo-war-dialing election campaigns.
Even though I'm in an older generation and prefer voice over text I have adopted the habit of only picking up callers that I know I want to speak to.
If it is that the ROI is just real unattractive for spam calls now... I wonder if the waves are just new people trying to spam for the first time. And taking a little bit of time to figure out that it's not profitable.
If so that's not great. Because there's probably an infinite supply of people ready to waste their money trying get-rich-quick crap.
Exponential increase over the past decade. Currently I get 5-10 calls per day. I'll get the same robocall from the same LA phone number (I've never lived anywhere near LA) three times a day for a month advertising roof repair or some shit like that (I don't own a home).
I apologize for the commercial plug, but when I switched off of CenturyLink and onto Ooma last year my robo / spam calls went way down. Part of that is that they have some filtering options, part of that is that I believe they provide telemetry to something akin to NoMoRobo.
I think it must vary a lot between numbers. My girlfriend gets a huge amount of spam calls. I get almost none, and we're on the same network. I do get a ton of spam texts though.
I still get multiple a day. Have had multiple a day for months (maybe years? My call log doesn’t go back far enough to know for sure).
I can’t block them because they are different numbers every time, so I have all unknown incoming calls set to go straight to voicemail.
I don’t even know what they are calling for. If I ever try to answer there is only silence on the line. But I haven’t even done that in months- hoping the calls would eventually stop. (They haven’t)
One infuriating thing is that there is some sort of “verified” checkmark in my call log for some numbers? Or maybe not verified, but “valid number?” Why are they even allowing non-verified calls through? It wouldn’t stop the problem, as 1/4 of my spam calls have the icon anyway. But it would help, surely.
I've not been asked about my car's extended warranty for months now.
I think the FCC finally shutting down just one or two blatant bad actors made a massive difference in robocalls. It just took them months (years?) to do it.
The robocalls are more rare for sure. But there’s been a huge uptick in shitty recruiters calling me with lowball offers for shitty jobs. I’ve had to remove my phone number from my resumes and delist it from indeed and stuff but it doesn’t seem to be helping. I don’t know how they’re finding me and they refuse to tell me.
I haven't had to handle any scam calls or texts since I switched to Android. I had no idea the feature was so effective. They should advertise it more.
Yes, because the calls and texts get classified into a "Spam & blocked" folder that I can go glance at if I feel bored. Some feature of either Android or the Google Pixel phone is doing this.
I may be atypical because I started a company and unfortunately used my personal cell is several places which got into sales databases. And made a political donation.
For me, it got so bad (multiple calls per day) I've stopped answering anything that isn't in my contacts already.
I think it's mainly a millennial and gen z thing-- older generations still answer all calls, at least those that aren't into tech. I think it's just easier to realize that anyone not in your contacts will either leave a voicemail or text you if it's that important.
I'm mid Gen X, and I can't imagine wasting my time answering all calls. I have my phone set to silence any unknown numbers. I'm not going to answer any call that isn't in my contact list. Voicemail a coherent message and I'll call you back and add you to my contacts.
We ignore it too. But I can tell the ones who do answer. They get extremely irate if you do not pick up when they call. As if it is their personal line to you and you should drop everything for them. I dump them into voicemail too.
I've decided to only receive calls/msgs from my contacts. On iPhone, you can do it by "Silence Unknown Callers". Instead of pretending I can ignore the spam calls, I'd rather take the risk when something super important are coming from an unknown number...
Not really an option for me - my child's care providers may call me from an unexpected phone number, plus the occasional doctor phone call from a number that's not the same one I call to schedule appointments, etc.
A voice/wireless provider can abuse a lot of things and get away with it now. Even if it is an obvious problem, the FCC doesn't do anything about specific complaints unless you hire an attorney to file a formal complaint. All of the wireless providers that sell cheap wireless can terminate your account and say they don't know you and there's nothing you can do. Actual telecoms that have skin in the game (Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, etc) can't do that due to there is usually a state/local regulator that can intervene.
> there is usually a state/local regulator that can intervene.
I was pretty shocked that when I complained to my state regulator about Verizon completely ignoring an issue with my business lines, I quickly got a call from a VP at Verizon grovelling and asking me what he could do for me. I said I needed my issue fixed, and then made what I thought was a crazy unrelated request- I wanted FIOS run all the way down the street to my business, and I'd been told previously that Verizon had no plans to expand FIOS in my area. Well, they fixed my issue within an hour, and within two weeks, they rolled trucks, ran the fiber down the street, and we had FIOS service up and running. They were obviously good and afraid of the state regulator.
If this leader is the good guy, why did it take them 4 years to do anything? That's a poor measure of progress.
The best thing they could do is make it impossible to spoof numbers or at least be able to reject them. Even then, you should be able to block anyone calling from a number that you cannot call back.
The full title of "Over 2,400 Voice Service Providers Face Removal for Failing to Comply with the Robocall Mitigation Database Filing Requirements" is a lot more clear.
> Removal from the database means other providers will
be prohibited from accepting call traffic from these providers.
PSA - use a free carrier lookup website to see where your spam calls and texts come from. Mine mostly come from Bandwidth (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandwidth_Inc.), Sinch (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinch_AB), and other such platforms with APIs. It appears these companies have very poor anti abuse practices. When I contacted them for help they basically refused to reveal how my number was obtained, what their practices were in establishing consent, and did no more than block one specific number each time from contacting me. Sometimes they claimed they’re just a wholesale reseller and have no obligations to take more action. They didn’t even respond to my repeated request to preserve data and communications relating to these repeated abuse cases. These companies should be shut down and their executives should be personally fined.
Don't most spam calls/texts these days use fake caller/sender IDs anyway?
> It appears these companies have very poor anti abuse practices. When I contacted them for help they basically refused to reveal how my number was obtained
How would a service provider know how your customer obtained your number?
But you reporting that you're receiving unwanted calls/texts from one of their customers should of course still trigger some action on their side – if indeed that's the number that contacted you, per the above.
By looking up the carrier you can then find the right company to complain to via their reporting process, if they have one. And additionally you can file a report to the FTC and FCC that mentions them.
EDIT: The idea is that you complain to the company whose platform is sending you spam, the regulatory agencies at https://consumercomplaints.fcc.gov/ and https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/, your own cell phone carrier by forwarding text spam to 7726, and that will result in actions that hopefully will address that one situation but also collectively reduce spam for everyone. Without identifying which platform sent you the spam, you cannot know which company to go complain to (they usually have a reporting tool on their website). And you can name them in your complaints to the FCC and FTC.
I’m assuming that you search for the originating phone number of spam callers? It was unclear to me from context how this would help in the manner you suggested, for blocking or reducing spam calls.
It does exist but you have to take the 5 minutes to fill out a form. You can find it at https://consumercomplaints.fcc.gov and click “Phone issues”. I also suggest simultaneously reporting to the FTC via https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/ and click “Report now”.
You can also forward spam text messages to 7726 in the US (goes to your cell phone carrier), which is very effective because the carriers have low tolerance for these issues and also train their own anti spam off this data.
The normal complaint about the EU's approach to regulation is that it's too vague and companies won't do business there in case they're found in breach of the vague laws.
In practice, at least on this subject, this just isn't a problem. I can't link to the directive that outlaws spam phone calls (it predates GDPR) but the telecoms clearly get told to stop facilitating them and yet I've never heard of a company that claims they were erroneously barred from the market.
Sorry, I feel dumb for asking, but what does “voice service providers” mean here? Like, Verizon and TMobile etc etc? Can’t be because there aren’t 2,411 cell companies.
My googling kind of indicates these are VoIP providers. But it still seems weird there are this many.
My vague guess is that these many providers have existed primarily to facilitate robocalling - to force the FCC to play wack-a-mole to get rid of them and FCC is now acting on them en masse, which might be more effective. But people who know this stuff might pipe up on the question.
I assume any company offering VoIP services that interact with phone numbers (Direct inward/outward dialing, DID etc) is potentially included. E.g., virtual PBX, Twilio and so on.
It can't happen too soon. When/if it does happen I will need to unblock the 1000 numbers that called me repeatedly. At one point, I wanted to block the entire 202 area code.
I _really_ wanted the headline to read "2600 phone providers"
A lot of people won’t understand the reference. An explanation or a link would be useful.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phreaking#2600_hertz
This person is putting Hacker in hacker news
Yeah, crazy there is just nowhere to get away from the people that just somehow always feel compelled to chime and tell you what to do.
I get this was a relatively benign comment that im nitpicking , and the recursion in my comment here and all that jazz, but couldn't help but notice that somehow a 2600 reference drew criticism for lack of reference. Almost feels like it was a self congratulating comment for recognizing the reference, but I'm over analyzing at this point
Holy moly, chill. There was no criticism, nitpicking, or “telling others what to do”. What an absurd extrapolation. It was a polite and harmless observation—one that I would have appreciated getting myself, by the way—on a funny comment that requires prior knowledge to understand the joke.
And yeah, you are overanalysing. Despite having read and enjoyed Mitnick’s Ghost in the Wires¹ I had absolutely forgotten 2600 was the specific frequency and had to hop around a few links to recall what this was about. Who would self-congratulate on something so small?
Hacker News is ostensibly about curiosity, so explaining references is absolutely on topic. And being lazy is a hacker trait, I personally dislike when I don’t pursue something interesting because there was no easy link to follow.
The irony in your comment is something else. Don’t assume bad faith.
¹ https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10256723-ghost-in-the-wi...
I had no idea that it was 2600hz tone that what started the whole phreaking scene.
> Bill discovered that a recorder he owned could also play the tone at 2600 Hz with the same effect.
I hadn't realised this was true: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ITfQGEASYvU
I'm in Northern Europe and lately spam calls, and especially spoofing from random peoples numbers have become so bad i know multiple who stopped taking any calls, or even changed their phone numbers because they got too many calls, or angry people called them because their number was spoofed.
To me the whole system is archaic - i know gen z would never ever take a call from someone they don't know, or even call each other - it's simply not something you do - it would be like reading your spam mails.
And i'm coming to the same conclusion, answering random people is naive.
Practically we need something new though.
> And i'm coming to the same conclusion, answering random people is naive.
Which is why people who pick up are great targets for whatever garbage is being peddled.
Yeah I’m old enough to almost be a boomer and I don’t answer the phone if the caller is not in my contacts.
I am a boomer, and I don't answer the phone. "If it's important, they'll leave a message."
And if it’s really important they’ll send a letter.
And once they have done that in triplicate, I might answer the phone.
I have seen a significant decrease in the amount of spam telephone calls over the last couple of years.
Is that what everybody else is seeing? That maybe Stir/Shaken is actually starting to work?
I guess it could just be that generational social change... where more people just don't take phone calls. So the ROI for spam calls has reduced...
I had a huuuuuuuuuuge increase the past couple months (10-20 a day). Almost all medicare fraud scams. They seem to be tapering down a bit (2-5 a day). It's interesting, because they have all my info (where I live, my full name, etc.), but somehow not my age? Because if they knew my real age, they shouldn't be calling me for medicare fraud scams... I wonder if maybe what's happening is that the people selling leads lists for scammers are willfully omitting age information, so they can charge more for a larger list which is not obviously 50%+ garbage scam leads for medicare fraud.
I also had an uptick in text spam (used to be very rare until maybe 9 months ago, then it became about 1-2 a day, now it's back down to just a few a week).
I almost never get spam calls yet I started to receive them almost daily preceding and after the election. Fortunately iOS is great at filtering them. I'd just like a feature to not see them at all, they don't deserve a single missed call notification or unread flag on my device.
I thought my girlfriend had abandoned me. My most frequent phone call by far was from a nice sounding recorded lady informing me that the extended warranty I never bought on a car that I never owned was in danger of expiring and this was my last chance to renew it. Ever. She would sometimes call me three times per day with that message but I haven't heard from her in months. I was afraid that my last chance had come and gone, or that she is no longer that into me. But it's just the FCC coming between us.
I haven't had a junk call since 2023 (aside from political polling) but I receive a fake usps text from international numbers pretty much daily.
google's messages app is pretty good at corralling them into a spam folder but I do peep in there every now and then. I hope that whatever provider is allowing these gets disconnected.
I get very little phone or SMS spam. All SMS spam gets replied to with "STOP", which, for most of the SMS services, is a strike against the spammer. I've been on the Do Not Call list since it started.
Email spam is repetitive enough that the usual Thunderbird filters work. If a spam email has an unsubscribe link, I click on that and add the sender to the block list. If it doesn't have an unsubscribe link, I try to find out which service sent it and send them a notice of a CAN-SPAM law violation. The usual suspects (Mailchump, SpamGrid, etc.) do terminate accounts for that, to prevent being blocked themselves.
I've started to get spam via iMessage lately which I assume avoids most automated scrutiny that may apply to bulk SMS. Usually in the form of "your UPS/USPS package address needs to be verified" or something.
My iMessage is configured to send read receipts, so I quickly bounce the setting before opening the message to click the "Report Junk" link (maybe it's pointless). It would be nice to mark things as spam/junk without having to open them, perhaps I will just delete them since iMessage has been a malware vector in the past.
> which, for most of the SMS services, is a strike against the spammer.
Huh, didn’t know that. I assumed that it was nothing more than baiting a response, verifying that the phone number is a hit.
How do you know STOP is a strike?
> which, for most of the SMS services, is a strike against the spammer
Citation needed.
All the vendors we use have STOP functionality baked in as it’s the correct way to ensure we can unsubscribe folk.
Even the FCC[1] seems to agree.
[1] - https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-24-24A1.pdf?bcs-...
I don't feel like I've gotten fewer spam calls.
My favorite spam call was someone wanting to make a cash offer on the Ohio State University building that my office is in.
"I tell you what, let's talk numbers. By the way, do you happen to have an interest in bridges?"
My anecdote:
I get no calls anymore, but I attribute it to pruning where my contact info is distributed and using the spam filters available on call/text.
My father got (no hyperbole) 90 calls a day, consistently, until I realized why he wasn’t answering his phone. He had used zero of the tools that the cell service provider and smartphone OS made available to him. Additionally, he likes talking to people, so he wouldn’t be “mean” to tell callers/testers to take him off their list.
Spam calls have decreased, spam texts increased.
Especially spam iMessage, which you'd think Apple would have a good handle on. Always iMessage from a foreign number.
surprised to read this, never had imessage spam once, didn't know it was even a thing.
I have had the opposite. I think it really just depends on which lists your number is on.
I tend to agree about the lists. I get a couple of spam calls and texts a week, which seems to be much, much less than what most of my friends get.
My father gets multiple spam calls every day. He lets them all go to voice mail, so nothing about his behavior encourages them to keep calling. Yet they keep coming.
I've had my cell number for about 15 years, and for another 10 years prior it was a land line, so 25 years in total. My father's cell number is only about 10 years old. So despite having a much older phone number, I get way less spam calls and texts than he does.
Part of that may be what lists we're on. Another reason may be that for the past 20 years, when ordering things online, 99% of the time I give a fake phone number. Companies claim they want it in case there is a problem delivering your order, but even before I started doing this, I never had a company call about an order they couldn't deliver. Once or twice they emailed me about an order they couldn't fulfill (out of stock, etc.), but I do give them a legit email. The 1% of the time I give a real phone number is when I'm dealing with a serious transaction, e.g. a bank or insurance or medical company.
That is really good, also because your tracking cookies get bound to your phone number and then market segmentation companies then use your phone number to direct ads to your tracking IDs. To them, your phone number is like your SSN.
I briefly saw a dropoff of spoofed calls, after STIR/SHAKEN.
I have a business line, and pretty much every call to it is spam.
The spoofed calls have picked up again. It looks like STIR/SHAKEN means squat.
I still get regular spam calls and spam texts. Maybe half the texts are obvious scams (make $1000s a day from home reshipping stolen goods) and the other texts are conversation starters that shady telcos can explain away as plausibly harmless (but are likely to be the first step in deliberate pig butchering scams).
About 7 weeks ago I picked up a new AT&T SIM to use for data backup while my fiber connection was out. Never placed _any_ calls and only 1 text to my current mobile number to capture the new number. I get 4-6 calls per day, most labelled "Spam Risk". This period included the last couple of weeks of the US election and the volume then was much higher from what I am guessing was robo-war-dialing election campaigns.
Even though I'm in an older generation and prefer voice over text I have adopted the habit of only picking up callers that I know I want to speak to.
It comes in waves; pretty much nothing for months and then 5+ a day for the past few days.
If it is that the ROI is just real unattractive for spam calls now... I wonder if the waves are just new people trying to spam for the first time. And taking a little bit of time to figure out that it's not profitable.
If so that's not great. Because there's probably an infinite supply of people ready to waste their money trying get-rich-quick crap.
Exponential increase over the past decade. Currently I get 5-10 calls per day. I'll get the same robocall from the same LA phone number (I've never lived anywhere near LA) three times a day for a month advertising roof repair or some shit like that (I don't own a home).
I apologize for the commercial plug, but when I switched off of CenturyLink and onto Ooma last year my robo / spam calls went way down. Part of that is that they have some filtering options, part of that is that I believe they provide telemetry to something akin to NoMoRobo.
I think it must vary a lot between numbers. My girlfriend gets a huge amount of spam calls. I get almost none, and we're on the same network. I do get a ton of spam texts though.
I've seen a significant decrease in both calls and text in the past months (though I haven't quantified it)
I've noticed a slight drop-off, but my phone is still useless.
I still get multiple a day. Have had multiple a day for months (maybe years? My call log doesn’t go back far enough to know for sure).
I can’t block them because they are different numbers every time, so I have all unknown incoming calls set to go straight to voicemail.
I don’t even know what they are calling for. If I ever try to answer there is only silence on the line. But I haven’t even done that in months- hoping the calls would eventually stop. (They haven’t)
One infuriating thing is that there is some sort of “verified” checkmark in my call log for some numbers? Or maybe not verified, but “valid number?” Why are they even allowing non-verified calls through? It wouldn’t stop the problem, as 1/4 of my spam calls have the icon anyway. But it would help, surely.
I don't wish android didn't offer to block the numbers as they are all spoofed.
I've not been asked about my car's extended warranty for months now.
I think the FCC finally shutting down just one or two blatant bad actors made a massive difference in robocalls. It just took them months (years?) to do it.
The robocalls are more rare for sure. But there’s been a huge uptick in shitty recruiters calling me with lowball offers for shitty jobs. I’ve had to remove my phone number from my resumes and delist it from indeed and stuff but it doesn’t seem to be helping. I don’t know how they’re finding me and they refuse to tell me.
I haven't had to handle any scam calls or texts since I switched to Android. I had no idea the feature was so effective. They should advertise it more.
Do you think having an Android phone has something to do with the drop in scam calls/texts?
Yes, because the calls and texts get classified into a "Spam & blocked" folder that I can go glance at if I feel bored. Some feature of either Android or the Google Pixel phone is doing this.
I may be atypical because I started a company and unfortunately used my personal cell is several places which got into sales databases. And made a political donation.
For me, it got so bad (multiple calls per day) I've stopped answering anything that isn't in my contacts already.
> I've stopped answering anything that isn't in my contacts already.
Isn’t that what everyone does? Or is it just a millennial thing…
I think it's mainly a millennial and gen z thing-- older generations still answer all calls, at least those that aren't into tech. I think it's just easier to realize that anyone not in your contacts will either leave a voicemail or text you if it's that important.
I'm mid Gen X, and I can't imagine wasting my time answering all calls. I have my phone set to silence any unknown numbers. I'm not going to answer any call that isn't in my contact list. Voicemail a coherent message and I'll call you back and add you to my contacts.
We ignore it too. But I can tell the ones who do answer. They get extremely irate if you do not pick up when they call. As if it is their personal line to you and you should drop everything for them. I dump them into voicemail too.
I'm several decades not a millennial and haven't answered the phone since...before the millennium.
That is only practical when you are young and life is simple.
Get married. Start a business. Get sick. Buy a house. Have children. Make interesting friends. Travel extensively.
Once life gets interesting, you start missing important calls with that strategy.
The only thing I haven't done on this list has have children, and I haven't yet missed an important call with that strategy.
If it's important, they can leave an relevant voicemail.
I have all those things. If it’s truly important they will text or leave a voicemail if I don’t pickup.
I've decided to only receive calls/msgs from my contacts. On iPhone, you can do it by "Silence Unknown Callers". Instead of pretending I can ignore the spam calls, I'd rather take the risk when something super important are coming from an unknown number...
Not really an option for me - my child's care providers may call me from an unexpected phone number, plus the occasional doctor phone call from a number that's not the same one I call to schedule appointments, etc.
"The sleeper has awakened" it feels like. The benevolent dictator which is the FCC is finally making some progress.
I fear the FCC will start reversing this progress once the new guy takes the reins. Without further comment:
https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/18/media/brendan-carr-trump-fcc-...
A voice/wireless provider can abuse a lot of things and get away with it now. Even if it is an obvious problem, the FCC doesn't do anything about specific complaints unless you hire an attorney to file a formal complaint. All of the wireless providers that sell cheap wireless can terminate your account and say they don't know you and there's nothing you can do. Actual telecoms that have skin in the game (Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, etc) can't do that due to there is usually a state/local regulator that can intervene.
> there is usually a state/local regulator that can intervene.
I was pretty shocked that when I complained to my state regulator about Verizon completely ignoring an issue with my business lines, I quickly got a call from a VP at Verizon grovelling and asking me what he could do for me. I said I needed my issue fixed, and then made what I thought was a crazy unrelated request- I wanted FIOS run all the way down the street to my business, and I'd been told previously that Verizon had no plans to expand FIOS in my area. Well, they fixed my issue within an hour, and within two weeks, they rolled trucks, ran the fiber down the street, and we had FIOS service up and running. They were obviously good and afraid of the state regulator.
I think I need whatever problem you had. Would it be easy to repro?
If this leader is the good guy, why did it take them 4 years to do anything? That's a poor measure of progress.
The best thing they could do is make it impossible to spoof numbers or at least be able to reject them. Even then, you should be able to block anyone calling from a number that you cannot call back.
I wonder which state abstained from “the FCC’s robocall enforcement partnerships with leaders from 49 states, the District of Columbia, and Guam.”
It’s Nebraska.
Ooma isn't in there (woot! that's my VOIP to DECT provider). There's a Zoom Telcom, but I don't think it's the Zoom we all know.
This is the change I'd like to see in the world! Way to go USA
The full title of "Over 2,400 Voice Service Providers Face Removal for Failing to Comply with the Robocall Mitigation Database Filing Requirements" is a lot more clear.
> Removal from the database means other providers will be prohibited from accepting call traffic from these providers.
Unfortunately that doesn't fit HN's 80 char limit. I've taken a crack at it, but if anyone can suggest a better title, we can change it again.
(Submitted title was "FCC Could Block Over 2,400 Providers from Robocall Mitigation Database".)
2,400 telephone providers fail to stop robocalls, may be shut down by the FCC.
I'm not sure if being removed from the Robocall Mitigation Database is tantamount to being shut down, but it sounds like it to me.
Thanks! I've used that, reordered just a bit.
"2k4 VSPs face removal re: compliance fail re: robocall mitigation DB filing reqs" is 80 but I'd say it was probably a bit on the cheating side.
> 2k4 VSPs
As an English speaker, I'd interpret 2k4 as 2004, not 2400.
In Chinese that structure would mean 2400, though I don't know how widely understood the K would be.
Where are you from?
Yeah, it should be 2.4k in English. Can probably trade the 's' in "reqs" for the decimal point.
2.4k has the exact same number of characters as 2400.
On the other hand, "2.4k" is inherently imprecise, whereas you'd need "2400+" to be similarly imprecise.
You also save on the comma in "2,400".
Yeah, I had to read the HN title a few times before the meaning clicked
Yeah this headline smells of crash blossoms, I read "face removal" as in the act of removing a face and I got confused
PSA - use a free carrier lookup website to see where your spam calls and texts come from. Mine mostly come from Bandwidth (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandwidth_Inc.), Sinch (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinch_AB), and other such platforms with APIs. It appears these companies have very poor anti abuse practices. When I contacted them for help they basically refused to reveal how my number was obtained, what their practices were in establishing consent, and did no more than block one specific number each time from contacting me. Sometimes they claimed they’re just a wholesale reseller and have no obligations to take more action. They didn’t even respond to my repeated request to preserve data and communications relating to these repeated abuse cases. These companies should be shut down and their executives should be personally fined.
Don't most spam calls/texts these days use fake caller/sender IDs anyway?
> It appears these companies have very poor anti abuse practices. When I contacted them for help they basically refused to reveal how my number was obtained
How would a service provider know how your customer obtained your number?
But you reporting that you're receiving unwanted calls/texts from one of their customers should of course still trigger some action on their side – if indeed that's the number that contacted you, per the above.
What's an example of these free carrier lookup websites?
Some example websites I got from a quick web search:
https://freecarrierlookup.com/
https://www.carrierlookup.com/
https://www.ipqualityscore.com/free-carrier-lookup
By looking up the carrier you can then find the right company to complain to via their reporting process, if they have one. And additionally you can file a report to the FTC and FCC that mentions them.
EDIT: The idea is that you complain to the company whose platform is sending you spam, the regulatory agencies at https://consumercomplaints.fcc.gov/ and https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/, your own cell phone carrier by forwarding text spam to 7726, and that will result in actions that hopefully will address that one situation but also collectively reduce spam for everyone. Without identifying which platform sent you the spam, you cannot know which company to go complain to (they usually have a reporting tool on their website). And you can name them in your complaints to the FCC and FTC.
I’m assuming that you search for the originating phone number of spam callers? It was unclear to me from context how this would help in the manner you suggested, for blocking or reducing spam calls.
There should be a way to submit a complaint to the FCC for each instance. I don't know how, but it should exist somehow.
It does exist but you have to take the 5 minutes to fill out a form. You can find it at https://consumercomplaints.fcc.gov and click “Phone issues”. I also suggest simultaneously reporting to the FTC via https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/ and click “Report now”.
You can also forward spam text messages to 7726 in the US (goes to your cell phone carrier), which is very effective because the carriers have low tolerance for these issues and also train their own anti spam off this data.
This seems like the US catching up with the EU.
The normal complaint about the EU's approach to regulation is that it's too vague and companies won't do business there in case they're found in breach of the vague laws.
In practice, at least on this subject, this just isn't a problem. I can't link to the directive that outlaws spam phone calls (it predates GDPR) but the telecoms clearly get told to stop facilitating them and yet I've never heard of a company that claims they were erroneously barred from the market.
Sorry, I feel dumb for asking, but what does “voice service providers” mean here? Like, Verizon and TMobile etc etc? Can’t be because there aren’t 2,411 cell companies.
My googling kind of indicates these are VoIP providers. But it still seems weird there are this many.
My vague guess is that these many providers have existed primarily to facilitate robocalling - to force the FCC to play wack-a-mole to get rid of them and FCC is now acting on them en masse, which might be more effective. But people who know this stuff might pipe up on the question.
I assume any company offering VoIP services that interact with phone numbers (Direct inward/outward dialing, DID etc) is potentially included. E.g., virtual PBX, Twilio and so on.
Verizon and TMobile are voice service providers, but not in the 2411 in question. The providers in question are small phone companies.
I got three spam phone calls in the span of 5 minutes today. Two of them with the exact same recorded message.
Anybody know if there is some program where I can get compensated for this harassment? (I vaguely remember of hearing about some program)
Here's the link to the PDF; https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-408083A1.pdf
Since there's a plain text version, we changed the url to that instead. (Submitted url was https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-could-block-over-2400-provi....)