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#21
Last edited by x509; 22 Mar 2020 at 22:03.
It would seem to me that any politician who promised to rid the earth of robo calls would be elected for life. It takes leadership from the top to develop technical solutions like the following.
1. a 3 digit code you poke into your phone that captures the robo callers data.
2. laws that punish repeat callers, including fining countries who harbor them.
3.a system of license fees and taxes placed on caller companies.
4. a system that wont permit a communications company to do business in the USA, like radio and tv licenses for information that goes over the air.
Sadly it's all too easy to fake a CLI (calling line identity).1. a 3 digit code you poke into your phone that captures the robo caller's data.
Apparently tracking and taking down overseas callers is especially difficult of course.
Given that in the UK - in normal circumstances- the police are inundated with fraud cases such that scams of 10s of millions of pounds go uninvestigated- finding the staff to deal with such things may be difficult.
Occasionally a cold calling centre (now subject to heavy fines as you suggest) is taken down in the UK.
A video taken secretly in an Indian scamming call centre was broadcast on TV here recently- highly organised, equipped, run by some tough people.
I saw where one of the many scammer-busters had one such scammer on the phone.
He was told to press Windows and R. (The usual, right?)
Our "buster" said that he sees the window, but there's no R button.
After a very lengthy phone conversation the buster revealed that he's dealing with his microwave oven! :)
"It cooks too slowly and I think maybe it has a virus!" :)
About #2. Maybe 20 years ago pagers were very popular and scammers made their money by paging you to some number you didn't recognize and keeping you on the phone as long as possible. Usually that number was some kind of "premium" service that cost many dollars a minute to connect.
So here in the US, the scammers would send you a number including the 3 digit area code. [For everyone outside of the US, it's the 3 digits after the +1 on a US number.] Here is the key. Some Carribean countries were part of the "North American Numbering Plan," which includes the US, Canada, and Mexico. So the number looked legit.
I once saw an interview with some government minister from one of these scammer-host countries. She was outraged that people would tell her country that they needed to crack down on the scammers. She claimed it was an infringement of their national sovereignty. More like, she was on the take from the scammers.
This is what I use on my landline. Stop robocalls and telemarketers with Nomorobo . If the calling number is on the list the phone rings once and the call gets redirected. IMHO the do not call list has turned into a please call list.
I just answer the call, don't say anything and let it go until they have to hang up, which eventually rings to tell me I'm off hook, then I hang up. It wastes their time and line time and I just put it on speaker phone so I can wait forever. It doesn't seem to do any good though, I still get as many as before. What I like are the calls from myself from my number, how stupid is that?
Other thing to do is if you get one asking for your CC number, tell them it's in the car and leave them waiting forever. But generally I won't even talk to them. It's actually best not to even respond.
I have Comcast Voice (USA), which is a VOIP service, so NoMoRobo works to block most junk calls after the first ring. So I never pick up any calls until after the first ring. And if the Caller ID shows the same exchange code (first 3 digits in a local number) then I know it's a spam call and I never pick up.
The legit callers will always leave voicemail. The spammers never do.