Let’s hope this helps! A lot of ‘em come from foreign countries though.

“The US Senate has passed a new bill that could help spell the end of robocall misery.

In a nearly unanimous vote, they voted to pass the Telephone Robocall Abuse Criminal Enforcement and Deterrence (TRACED) Act, which threatens to slap scammers with heavy fines for each robocall they make.

The move comes as legislators, government agencies and consumer advocacy groups have ramped up calls to bring an end to the scourge of unwanted calls that affect millions of consumers every year…”

https://mol.im/a/7068337

While I like the idea, I don't see how they will actually enforce this and doubt anyone in government will follow through.
Let's hope for the best but not get our hopes up too much.

I have a shiny new nickel, and I'm willing to bet that if the carriers / service providers were held accountable, backed up by fines, there would be some amazing technological solutions deployed very quickly.

It should not be that difficult to authenticate the origin of a call.

Pipe Smoker notes that many of these robocalls originate offshore. Certainly, those offshore calls that carry U.S. Caller ID numbers, clearly non-legitimate calls, could be filtered and trapped before ever reaching a subscriber.

We have (or could develop) the technology.

I say this as one of the engineering team that worked on development of ANI (Automatic Number Identification, for call origination) system at Bell Telephone Laboratories, starting in 1960. ANI was a predecessor of Caller ID.

I'd love to see them fined per call, and the carrier fined for not cutting them off.

On the downside, I'm match V-tail's shiny new nickel and bet politicians exclude themselves so they can robocall/robotext to campaign. The Beto O'Rourke '16 Senate campaign was ridiculous with the robotexts.

I hope this helps,that new set of phones I bought in December is about to get all full up in the block call department.
That anominous phone bank has over two dozen numbers and I have at least twenty blocked.

I've heard it all before.

I don't answer calls I don't recognize. They go to voicemail that tells them to text me

I don't answer calls I don't recognize. If they leave a message they get blocked. At work I leave my phone on my bench so I don't hear it most of the time.

I’m sure it will work twice as better as the do not call registry.

Then the congress-critters will all pat themselves on the back while saying look what we did for you..

Charge 10 cents a call and it would stop.

quote:

Charge 10 cents a call and it would stop.

I had a similar thought awhile back. Everybody with a phone has money on deposit with their provider. When you call somebody they have the option to charge you for the call or not. All charged calls are credited to your phone bill.

quote:

Originally posted by V-Tail:
I have a shiny new nickel, and I'm willing to bet that if the carriers / service providers were held accountable, backed up by fines, there would be some amazing technological solutions deployed very quickly.

Of course there would.

A couple months or so ago FCC Chairman Ajit Pai told the carriers "Fix this problem or we'll fix it for you." Obviously the carriers believed him no more than did I.

quote:

Originally posted by V-Tail:
We have (or could develop) the technology.

Of course we have (or could).

It's a mirror of the email spam problem. The cause is the same (a weak protocol not designed with abuse in mind) and the people obstructing the changes necessary to fix it are the same (carriers/ISPs and marketers).

Congress isn't going to fix it because Congress is thoroughly disfunctional--half of it is too busy trying to reverse the last Presidential election and the other half has no chutzpah. The FCC under the current Chairman, and most of the rest of the Board, isn't going to fix it because their interests do not align with those of consumers.

quote:

Originally posted by darthfuster:
I don't answer calls I don't recognize. They go to voicemail that tells them to text me

That's all you can really do.

The fact that having to do that seriously degrades the utility of having a phone (same with email) one would think would cause our government to act.

Well, you'd think that unless you understand our government is thoroughly broken, corrupt, or both.

These asshats don't use no stinken' phone; they use a computer, VOIP. The consumers carrier will have to block them. And they should, cause we're the one's payin' them for the privilege of being robo called. If a carrier would deploy blocking, they would be inundated with customers switching carriers.

oh great, more government.

yay.

hunt them down and let a SEAL team dispose of them

do that two or three times and the problem will fix itself

quote:

Originally posted by nhtagmember:
hunt them down and let a SEAL team dispose of them

do that two or three times and the problem will fix itself

After being awakened, interrupted, and just plain aggravated by robocallers and phone solicitors I think this is an excellent idea.