At this point I'm firmly of the opinion that "leak this 10 digit code and anyone on the planet can call me relentlessly" is just a broken model. Maybe that worked better when the calls carried a significant cost, but clearly the scammers are able to do this sort of thing at scale.
In practice of course, my phone is 100% permanently in "do not disturb" mode and does not ring at all unless I've added you to my contact list. Which means the scammer, already pretending to live in small town rural USA (where they most certainly are not) has to correctly guess the number of one of my relatives before my pocket actually rings. It also means I'm unreachable for anything actually important that isn't in my contact list. That's an annoying price.
I'm not sure what the correct end solution is, but the current solution seems to be very broken.
I didn’t realize how bad it got until my father stopped answering calls. It turned out he was getting (no hyperbole) 90 calls a day from spammers and vendors he had no relationship with.
I used the iOS filter, the AT&T filter, and turned on the shortcut so the phone doesn’t ring unless the caller is in his contacts.
The problem is that it already changed his behavior. He doesn’t answer the phone anymore, even if it is a person he recognizes. The Pavlovian response to his ringtone is still very negative.
I’m sure there is a non-trivial percentage of the US who already viscerally hates receiving phone calls.
That's wild. I'm in the US, and I get maybe 1-2 spam calls a month. I get more spam texts than calls, though not many of those either. I've never done anything special to try to prevent them, so I wonder what the difference is.
My theory is age. I get very few calls. Neither does my wife. My mother in law is called multiple times a day. I assume there’s some basic demographic data available out there and they’re targeting retirees because they know (statistically speaking) they’re an easy hit.
I think an important factor is also how long you had the same number. I switch numbers every couple of years because I get a new contract and moving the number to the new company is such a hassle. Over time you share your number with more and more companies and people who sell it or get breached.
My parents had their number for ~30 years. I never get spam calls or texts. They get one once a week or so (this is in Germany, we get a lot fewer of these calls).
I suggest the caller stakes a little bit of money as a deposit that is, by default, returned to them within a day... But an angered recipient can retaliate by choosing to seize the deposit.
I think this works for many situations:
1. Between amicable friends and businesses/clients, nothing changes.
2. If there was a normal relationship, but one side starts unfairly seizing call-deposits... Well, maybe it's time to no longer have them as a vendor/customer/friend.
3. Spammers either eat the additional cost, or they have to work harder to make sure they only call people who are unlikely to retaliate.
_____
There's still a problem where someone asks to be called (the number needn't actually be theirs) as a way to trick the caller into losing money... But even then, I think it represents an improvement over what we've got now.
Yes, but this is probably best instituted at the telecom layer as there are fewer people to educate / complain / litigate drama. Telecoms who self-police don't need it and if they fall from grace they can post collateral to be let back in. I predict that suddenly the telecoms who previously turned a blind eye towards scam call-centers will suddenly become very good at pursuing scammers once they become a threat rather than an asset.
If I could just block the numbers, or auto send to voicemail, that my phone already flags as Spam/Telemarketing this wouldn’t be so frustrating for me. I do need my phone to ring for unknowns/outside my contacts numbers, so the blocking ability I need isn’t available (on iOS anyway.) I am left manually doing this when something rings if it is flagged, I will ignore it and if it’s unknown and not flagged I will answer it. It’s not perfect but could easily cut more than half of my current interruptions.
For what it's worth, upcoming iOS 26 has a new screening feature. The idea is that calls from numbers you don't have a connection with will be asked to briefly identify themselves and why they're calling. It'll show you this text and give you the choice to block/send-to-voicemail/ignore/accept.
The problem I have with my iPhone is not callers, thankfully, it’s random iMessage from emails spamming me constantly, as many as 5 per day. The “filter unknown senders” option does not appear to work at all for these scammers.
I had this on my old Pixel. The result was that people generally hung up and didn't leave a message. Apple is a little bit better with marketing and hopefully won't make the same dumb move of making it a "pro only feature" so maybe it'll be different this time around...
There's also a "send unsaved numbers to voicemail" option if you don't like the call screening, and a separate toggle that puts calls/voicemails from unknown numbers on a separate list from the main one.
Yeah. I'm not sure why Spam Risk rings because it almost certainly is spam. But I do get doctor offices, service people related to something I'm dealing with at the moment, emergencies related to family members, etc. that are legit. I suspect the permanently do not disturb faction are mostly in a different life stage than many of us.
I'd probably add that the area code + exchange calls from an area code that you don't actually live in are spam as well though don't see those as much as I once did.
As others have alluded, there are unknown third parties who must call you (and you would want their call). For example, the hospital: something has happened with a loved one. We can probably solve this problem with certification. Show me your medical license (or hospital scale equivalent) and you get to make unsolicited calls. Then we allow people to select certified unsolicited calls by category: medical, financial, civic, etc.
Even in this case, I'd rather get a text message. A mere call doesn't provide any context and is not informative. Maybe your loved one showed up in their ER or maybe it's a billing issue.
The text message should explain the nature of the call and which number to call in reply.
I think there are HIPAA issues there. You can't just SMS a random number medical information, it ends up being something like "$HOSPITAL has a message for you, log in at $RANDOM_EHR or call us back at $NUMBER".
I agree that a text can help provide context, and I definitely prefer it for non-emergency communications, but sometimes people want to go straight to synchronous communication so they can discuss urgent details without delay.
> The text message should explain the nature of the call and which number to call in reply.
You lost me here. If I get an unsolicited text message claiming to be a doctor who needs to speak to me urgently about a loved one's medical emergency, I'm not calling back via any number other than the hospital's front desk or switchboard. Invoking an emergency and asking you to call an unverified phone number is scamming 101.
I don't have this problem at all thanks to Pixel Phone. That spam screen feature alone is keeping me on the Android ecosystem. I don't recall one spam call in the last year. And legitimate new caller (not on my contact list) can still reach me after like 5 seconds with the bot.
I've received I think two total spam calls in the years since I ported my cell number to a voip service and set up an IVR in front that just says to press any number. It also blocks the very, very few robocalls I might actually want, and occasionally some company will refuse to accept a voip number as a cell number, but most everything just works fine.
Imagine if the concept of a phone call did not exist. We still have these computers in our pockets, but without the history of the telephone system.
Then, one day, an app developer thought: Wouldn't it be cool if there was an app that would interrupt what the user was doing, play a sound, vibrate the device, and put up a full-screen dialog, that this all could be activated remotely by any other device by simply typing in a short numeric code, and that if the recipient pushed a button, the remote attacker could send audio data and activate the recipient's microphone? Most app stores would classify this as malware, yet here we are today with devices that all have built-in apps that do exactly this, and only because of how normalized the legacy idea of a "phone call" is.
That‘s a great example of how technology can change the rules. In the era of rotary phones hardly anyone would have felt the need to describe it that way. But nowadays it‘s appropriate.
> Wouldn't it be cool if there was an app that would interrupt what the user was doing
It seems like this sort of idea is extremely common, considering how many websites love preventing me from viewing their content by slapping multiple modals asking me to sign up for a newsletter and/or to get my permission to be tracked using cookies.
It also shows up in native apps, in the form of some prompt asking the user if they are enjoying the app. NO! I do not enjoy being funneled into an App Store review or any similar bullshit. If I like using the app, I'll use it. If I don't, I won't. Stop asking me!
I build websites for a living and I'm constantly battling requests to infect our sites with these god-awful modals. It's like sitting down at a restaurant, being handed a menu, only to have the menu taken away seconds later and being asked if you'll return in the future. Not only is it rude, it's the wrong time to ask the question. Let me read the damn article or whatever, and when I'm done, if there's a newsletter form, MAYBE I'll sign up. Let me eat my meal, and if I enjoy it I'll think about returning.
I’ve tried this method, but it didn’t work out for many reasons. I often have to deal with people I don’t personally know for various reasons (mechanic, lawn care, doctors, school staff, etc.), and I have missed too many important calls like this, so I basically just have to deal with it. About 50% of the time it seems to be caught with “spam risk” or something like that, otherwise I just use my judgment.
There are so many simple solutions, just like phone privacy is fixable (firewall your phone)
I just don't think anyone wants to fix it. Why can't apple let us send "spam risk" to voicemail?
Like adding extensions, possibly with passwords to your phone line.
It would be good to give an extension or password to friends, or one for each business, which can be automated to input with a pause after answering, and it gets through (or further) if possible.
> I'm not sure what the correct end solution is, but the current solution seems to be very broken.
I think one of two high-level approaches:
We could be ultra-strict about who is allowed to call whom, and have penalties and enforcement similar to how we police credit card fraud.
Or, we could do away with phone numbers and instead come up with a scheme where you show a QR-like code to allow someone to call you; and then you can revoke that permission if/when it is abused.
---
Finally, I think the crux of the problem is that in the US we tolerate far too much of this kind of behavior. (Unsolicited contact for the purpose of sales.) Without a corresponding publicity campaign, there's far too much cultural tolerance of allowing anyone to contact anyone at any time for any reason to accept the kind of change needed to truly contain SPAM.
Leak? It's a 10 digit code where you can throw out more than two thirds of them. The only leaking is getting names attached and being currently active.
I mean numbers are as terrible as social security numbers. For both of them you can take your number, add one, and get another valid number.
I'm also not sure what the correct solution is but I'm sure there's some pretty smart people out there that have some really good ideas and understand the issue with a lot of complexity (aka: I won't believe anyone who starts with "It's so simple, you just...")
> I'm also not sure what the correct solution is but I'm sure there's some pretty smart people out there that have some really good ideas and understand the issue with a lot of complexity
While there are certainly technical challenges and various trade-offs, those are not the main reason we're still getting buried in spam calls. My understanding is that smart people have already come up with good solutions which can be implemented at relatively low cost and which would be substantially effective - but the solutions have not been universally deployed because:
1. They generally require coordinated action between governments, standards bodies, regulators and disparate companies at different levels of the telecom ecosystem. These parties have divergent processes, goals and opinions on who should bear the costs and/or responsibilities for implementation, enforcement, etc.
2. The major U.S. telecom companies make money by transiting calls they know (or should know) are very likely spam. They don't want to give up that revenue so they find ways to not fully adopt, delay or weaken various proposals. These can include the motivated leveraging of legitimate technical issues or concerns to complicate, defer and otherwise hinder the processes in which they are involved as significant stakeholders. Many mobile phone operators now also earn revenue selling spam call blocking as a separate feature or part of more expensive plans. If the problem was substantially fixed they would lose that revenue.
3. There are various political stakeholders, industries and companies (not the off-shore, bottom-feeding spammer/scammers) which have a vested interest in keeping unsolicited calls legal. These include some of the more legit-ish forms of domestic telemarketers such as recruiters, fund-raisers, political campaigns, pollsters, market survey companies, etc. These companies have industry associations which hire lobbyists and make political donations to ensure their particular use is exempt from any regulations and that their cost of doing business doesn't go up to comply with the new system. Carving out all these exceptions and exemptions significantly complicates and/or weakens most technical solutions.
This is why I believe there is currently zero hope of any significant improvement despite the FCC issuing positive sounding announcements exactly like this one every 6 to 18 months for the last ten years. These FCC announcements rarely mention the workarounds, exemptions, appeals processes, delayed or unfunded enforcement which industry insiders already know will allow spam calls to continue with no substantial change. These announcements are merely the FCC fulfilling their political role of appearing to regulate and taking steps to mitigate the problem. Now the FCC managers who are measured on "do something about spam calls" can check that box on their KPIs. However all the various parties in the ecosystem have already taken steps to ensure whatever the FCC is announcing won't really work well or can be worked around relatively easily. For example, I'm sure most of the people behind the companies supposedly banned in this announcement (or their large offshore spammer/scammer customers) have already made other arrangements to continue operating uninterrupted. I hate that it's this way but the reality is, until the three fundamental blockers listed above change, this is all just "Regulatory Theater" much like the TSA's "Security Theater" performances.
> In practice of course, my phone is 100% permanently in "do not disturb" mode and does not ring at all unless I've added you to my contact list.
I go even further, unless there is a good reason for someone to have the ability disturb me, they're not whitelisted. I have no phones that ring unless it's for a specific and temporary purpose.
A ringing phone is an anachronism, it's incredible to me that people let anyone bother them in this way these days. Its an invasion of ones personal space.
It also means I'm unreachable for anything actually important that isn't in my contact list. That's an annoying price.
Calling me is now the equivalent to wanting to send me a telegram. The phone system is broken, we all know it's broken, and yet you want my phone number? Send me an email, it's just as fast and has better tools for managing scumbags. Unknown callers are silenced and go to voicemail. Wife is in an auto accident? State troopers know how voicemail works. Kid is in trouble? It can wait 30 seconds while I wait for the VM to come through (and, haha, trick question: we don't have kids).
OTOH, I grew up in the era of landlines and payphones, and well before answering machines (old school VM). People still got in accidents, kids still got sick at school and needed to come home, doctors still called, and we all got along just fine. Because EMTs still took people to the hospital, the school nurse still took care of your kid, and the doctor either called back or sent a letter, and the world move on despite not being able to instantly reach people 24x7. I realize I sound like one of those "we didn't have $SAFETY_FEATURE, and we lived", when in reality not all of us did. But we aren't talking about lawn darts, for the most part I think we did get along just fine. (Auto accidents and breakdowns are something made better by cell phones, but in the day lots of folks had CB radios. ::shrug::)
Both times my wife was in a car accident, and once that my son was, in the past few years, an unknown phone call was not necessary as either their phone or their car immediately alerted me.
>I'm not sure what the correct end solution is, but the current solution seems to be very broken.
If we just made it impossible for phone calls to reach US destinations if they originate from a short list of foreign countries, would that actually do anything to address this issue?
I get relentless text and phone spam calls - both robotic and with humans - from just a few voice over Internet platforms. Bandwidth.com, Neutral Tandem, and ALL the brands associated with Sinch (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinch_AB) like Inteliquent. Many of these companies got cease and desist orders in the past from the FTC. It didn’t help anything. We need to see them fined, shut down, and executives jailed.
What do you do when these lookups return the company that owns the number but the company says that they are not in control of the number? E.g, I have one number that keeps harassing me that reports as Verizon but Verizon says they have not been with Verizon since 2024.
I'm not positive, but i think they charge an astronomical amount for calls that don't originate from a local calling prefix. Of course you can get those, but some countries require ID.
Mainly I know that calling from a voip number was really expensive when I tried to set something up for a family member going on vacation to Europe. That probably cuts back on a lot of spam calls.
These are all platforms with many different products built but others on top of them. Shutting down all abuse is a cat and mouse game and not something they can "just do" if given tighter rules
This seems solvable. Put the person most closely traceable to the source of the spam in jail, like a form of KYC laws. If you can't identify the actual human who is causing you to put spam into the network, or that person is outside of your country's jurisdiction, then you are the one who goes to jail. If you don't want to go to jail, then don't accept calls from someone you can't point the finger at.
This is how Germany deals with torrent piracy. The net effect is that it was illegal to run a public WiFi hotspot until a special exemption was made for it. In 2017.
Shut that one down and jail the execs too. The number of people willing to take that chance is finite; it is more finite when the penalty is seen to be consistently applied.
This is why executives need to be held personally responsible when they direct a company to wilfully, blatantly, and repeatedly disregard laws to the detriment of society. These are people who should be in prison for a time, and barred from serving as an officer of a corporation for more time after that. Eventually people get the message; you don't get to break laws just because you hide behind the name of a company.
Sinch just keeps acquiring one company after the other and turning them into the new spam channel. Weirdly the only responsible player seems to be Twilio. The others refuse to identify the spammers that are their customers, and keep saying it’s not their responsibility since they’re a “wholesaler” (their words).
The PSTN is simply not sustainable. It’s a relic of a time when there was no practical way to authenticate or validate calls. Today, with malicious actors able to dial in from anywhere in the world at negligible cost, the system is fundamentally unequipped to handle the abuse it faces.
Efforts like STIR/SHAKEN exist, but they’re little more than a band-aid—and not a particularly effective one—because the underlying network was never designed with resilience or trust in mind.
I know some people push back on this view, often pointing to edge cases where PSTN’s ubiquity still provides value. But as trust in the system erodes, so does its relevance. And if the majority of people already avoid answering calls from numbers they don’t recognize, its practical utility is clearly diminished.
This is a corollary to Chesterton’s fence. unsignedint’s public good.
If you can’t explain the benefit then you can’t tear it down.
The PSTN guarantees that all telco operators interoperate. Without it you get what happened with instant messaging. AKA walled gardens. You take for granted the ability to call an iPhone with an Android.
The FCC is responsible for maintaining trust, which they have done here. They can incentivize telco providers to curb the spam activity. You don’t need to throw the baby out with the bath water.
I think Chesterton’s fence is a fair analogy—but it only works if the “fence” still serves a protective function. With the PSTN, the fence is riddled with holes, and the people meant to maintain it can’t keep up with the erosion. Interoperability was indeed its greatest strength, but today that same universality is what lets malicious actors reach everyone at trivial cost.
Comparing PSTN to instant messaging walled gardens is interesting, but I’d argue the real parallel is email: a federated, open standard that also suffers from spam and abuse, yet still manages to limp along thanks to heavy filtering and layered trust systems. The PSTN never evolved those trust layers; instead, it relied on scarcity (call cost, geographic constraints) to keep abuse in check. Once those costs collapsed, the trust model collapsed with them.
As for the FCC, sure, they can try to incentivize carriers. But the fact that we need constant regulatory intervention just to keep basic trust afloat suggests the system is no longer structurally sound. Band-aids like STIR/SHAKEN prove the point: we’re bolting authentication onto a protocol that never envisioned it. That might extend its life a little, but it doesn’t make the foundation any less fragile.
So the question isn’t whether the PSTN once had value (it did, massively), but whether preserving it now delivers more value than the cost of propping it up. If a good chunk of people already treat unknown calls as spam until proven otherwise, then the social contract around the PSTN has already been broken.
> Comparing PSTN to instant messaging walled gardens is interesting, but I’d argue the real parallel is email: a federated, open standard that also suffers from spam and abuse, yet still manages to limp along thanks to heavy filtering and layered trust systems.
I think you're absolutely right to draw that parallel. But, today's email landscape isn't much of a federated open standard. It's a web of trust and distrust, filters, and deliverability issues. It's real work to maintain an email server and attain high deliverability with other email services. So much so that most don't even do it anymore. Most email is just delivered by a few large providers.
Really, email is suffering from a lot of the same issues that PSTN also suffers from. But email providers just decided to "solve" the problem themselves, mostly by taking a heavy hand at blocking things and deciding they don't really care if you're not a big provider.
I have been using Pixel phones since they came out and currently have a Pixel 9. They have EXCELLENT spam call blocking. There are a couple other comments below that reference this but I wanted to highlight it at the top. There are other reasons I like Google's phones, but this tops the list.
The assistant integration is great for this reason too. I occasionally get calls come through that are likely SPAM but I've learned to let the assistant answer for me. If it's a spammer, then I waste just a small amount of their time.
It's especially helpful that Google's Assistant has gotten good enough, AND that people making legit but unsolicited calls (like doctor's offices), that people calling don't hang up right away and actually answer the assistant. So I can see what they say and then answer when it's a legit call.
The ratio of SPAM calls to legit calls from unrecognized numbers is still higher for SPAM. But, the frequency is low enough (maybe a few a week), and dealing with them is so easy, that the distraction/annoyance factor is very low to the point that I'm not personally bothered by it anymore.
I've tried to get my grandma to switch to a Pixel phone for her main phone number at home, just for SPAM blocking, but she won't. I don't know how she stands getting multiple calls per hour, it's crazy to put up with when we are there.
On a side note, today and yesterday I've been bombarded with spam calls. Even got one while writing this comment. All of which have my same area code, which is for a location I haven't live at for over 15 years. No voice mail, nothing. It's not even this bad around election time.
Btw, if you haven't already, you can sign up for the FCC's Do Not Call list[0]. While obviously this isn't going to solve everything, it does make it illegal for legitimate companies to call you. Absent this incident, it did appear to have a significant effect in reducing spam calls when I signed up years ago. Also, here's some info about junk mail[1]. It costs about $6 and lasts 10 years.
The do not call list seems to be a "Spam me, you brute" list.
In the beginning, they seemed to take their job seriously, but I doubt that has been the case for many years.
Right after SHAKEN/STIR was passed, I got zero spoofed calls. I did get a few robocalls, but they weren't spoofed.
For a month or so. So that shows the problem can be solved, legislatively.
Then, they started coming back, and now, almost every call I get, is spoofed. This includes some legit ones.
Also, legit callers should keep in mind that the autodialer companies they employ, might also moonlight as spammers, so they get blacklisted. I have had quite a number of legit calls get listed as spam.
Cynically, I feel as if politicians are unwilling to get tough on these, because they (or their proxies) use them. That seems to be both sides of the aisle.
Cynically, I feel as if politicians are unwilling to get tough on these, because they (or their proxies) use them.
Of course they do, and they voted themselves an exception. Same reason some small business in Redmond, WA isn't allowed to put out a sandwich board sign, but 10 months before every election every g*ddamned piece of dirt in Redmond has a political sign stuck into it.
Funny enough, when that Roy Moore scandal was unfolding I was living in The South and I kept getting calls and voicemails from someone named "Bernie Bernstein" who was definitely trying their best impression of Bernie Sanders while telling me about how Democrats are pedophiles.
Also, legit callers should keep in mind that using a screening service (like Google's) should mean "I'm looking at my phone but you're calling from an unknown number so why do you expect me to pick it up in a world where literally everyone knows how common spam calls are?"
As well as "If you leave a message there's a decent chance I'm going to call you back in 30 seconds, I don't want to start a game of phone tag."
If I don't know your number AND I'm not expecting a call, I 100% will not answer it. If you're legit, sorry, you are the exception, not the typical case. Don't blame me, blame the spammers.
The modern world is absolutely infuriating, filled with self-inflicted problems.
> Right after SHAKEN/STIR was passed
It has definitely gone through ebbs and flows. Predictably around legislation about this topic. I 100% believe this is a problem that can be solved (greatly impacted) through legislation given this strong correlation. But I don't think it is because the DNC list is a list to call but rather that I've had this number for a few decades and it definitely made it onto some list years ago.
> moonlight as spammers
This is 100% happening. As well as a lot of other illegal stuff. I worked at a call center for two months between my undergrad and getting hired and my coked up bosses 100% asked us to do illegal things. I disobeyed. Anytime someone asked me to take them off the list I complied. Got written up, didn't give a fuck. They were definitely selling those lists to spammers who were happy to have confirmation that the numbers were legitimate.
They figured out the flaw to SHAKEN/STIR.
It was mandated for VOIP calls.
So instead these scam call centers switched to the legacy SS7, that's how you are getting all these fraudulent calls. SS7 is not IP based and incompatible with SHAKEN/STIR
And it'll be 400 years from now before any US telecom thinks about discontinuing SS7.
> All of which have my same area code, which is for a location I haven't live at for over 15 years
I am in a similar situation. One of my not-yet-implemented projects is to route my phone through a VOIP app that automatically blocks any number from my phone's area code (or even the whole state) where the caller is not in my contact list.
A few times it has been bad enough I've thought about picking up learning how to make phone apps so that I can one click report the numbers to the FCC. I'm not sure it'll do something but making an explicit "fuck you, do something about this" statement tends to help. Squeaky wheel and all that... (Why is this not a feature in the base phone app?)
I have an app on Android called SpamBlocker. I added a regex rule to deny any call from my area code - like you, I haven't lived there for a long time. I'd 100% recommend this approach.
Funny, Today I received TEN spam calls. Each had about half an hour in between, from various numbers and area codes. I have never received that many spam calls ever.
I have received that many on average every day for the last 2-3 years. Nothing I can do about it, my number is public for business calls. It's absolutely rage inducing.
"do not call" means "call me from India on a burner number". Seriously, I've been fighting scammers for years now and their MO is some sort of SEO service where a local business pays to get more "marketing" and (probably unbeknownst to them) their money is used to fund an outbound call center in India that robodials all day long, careful to not call during the night. The calls solicit Medicare upgrades, burial insurance, or home improvement. I don't think these are the malignant "clean your bank account" scammers, they end up promoting legitimate business with the catch that "by accepting this offer you agree to be called (by the local rep) even if you are on the DNC list". So their original robodial is illegal but it's from India so good luck with that, but they record your consent if you pretend to be interested in the product, so you cannot sue the people who contracted them. It's just a classic skirt the law ploy.
Exactly. My city started posting about online safety and warnings about various scams. Unfortunately, almost every one of them also mentions how a local resident was victimized. We have a fairly large senior population.
It's easy to say it's idiots who fall for this stuff when we're young enough to have grown up in this world or started using new technology at an early age. We will be the ones targeted someday and it will be a medium that didn't become available to us until later in life just like what the seniors are experiencing now.
> It's easy to say it's idiots who fall for this stuff
It’s not just “easy”, it’s an ideological imperative to ensure that the vulnerable have “personal responsibility” to avoid predation, while predators bear no responsibility for their own actions. Many tech business models depend on exploitation — it’s not just phone scammers.
It's always convenient to decide that the weak deserve to be exploited because they were too lazy or stupid to be strong. Then we can do the thing that makes the least sense, which is to design society to protect the strong.
Or rather, to justify what the strong were already doing and didn't have to ask anybody's permission to do, and that nobody else ever had a say about that mattered.
Yes, although it's worth mentioning that there are scams that target our demographic, they just look different (fake investment, job, real-estate, or romance opportunities).
Apple makes it extremely easy to fall prey to email scams. They absolutely refuse to show an email address in less than 3 taps. There’s no setting in Mail to always show the address and they trust all senders to give an honest name. So if a contact loses their contact list scammers can send a known name with a junk address and you won’t see it unless you go out of your way.
Apple makes a lot of dumb user-hostile decisions but this one is particularly egregious and has caught me off guard.
The "r/scams" sub-reddit is an amazing glimpse into this world. The saddest ones to me are the peoples' parents who fully believe they're talking to a celebrity who needs their money for some outlandish reason (and they send it to them over and over).
I know a gal whose grandmother sent ~400k to scammers, which is the kind of victim they are looking for - someone in cognitive decline who is malleable. The neighbors apparently also were preying on her, and ended up with her cars and a bunch of other stuff.
Good start. Next, put the people running these scam phone providers in jail.
I agree. In fact, 1200 SS7 circuits is nothing. If these people are not locked up they will just get another circuit using another fake identity. It's like blocking 1200 ASN's and saying one made a dent in spam.
No, labeling is not enough, options are not enough, unattested communication needs to go silently to spam by default. Anything else encourages the spam. "We let spammers ring your phone unless you tick an option 5 menus deep in your phone that gets automatically reset every 3 months at update time and moved every 2 years between names/locations that range from awful to insane" doesn't cut it.
The beautiful thing about default-deny for internationally-sourced calls is it fixes the spam problem for everyone, including those who opt-in. If 90% of the spammers' calls are just immediately dropped, they're no longer going to get enough hits to be worth the effort, so it also protects those who actually do have a legit reason to receive international calls.
Yes, but we don't even have to go that far: international != unattested. Legitimate overseas telecoms should be able to sign their communications. The point isn't to seal off the USA, the point is to have someone to ban if they start abusing access.
Most international telecom operations aren't facilitating scam call centers, and of the ones who are I suspect very few are so eager to turn a blind eye that they will continue to do so when staring down the barrel of actual consequences.
All the companies have a direct connection to the phone network in the US. The FCC is cutting them off from the US phone network because they have failed to adopt robocall mitigation measures.
If a country dares have IP laws less restrictive than the US would like, the US finds plenty of levers to pull. But in this case, the matter is something that is illegal in the scammer's country also (clear fraud tends to be illegal everywhere), so there's probably more that US police could do than literally nothing.
Being outside of US legal jurisdiction is exactly why they ought to be thrown into a wood chipper.
I don't understand why this doesn't happen EVERY DAY until the problem is resolved.
And before someone cite US code: it's virtually impossible for foreigners to seek justice in this context. Not only do these criminals lack the money, education, and access to legal representation to do so, but the DoJ has better things to do than spend their time looking into the veracity of an international claim of this kind.
Why can someone from outside the US make my phone ring? Why can't I opt out of calls sourced internationally? Seems like an easy way to fix the problem. There is no reason for anyone overseas to call me, and if someone US-based does phone spamming, we can prosecute them.
Why can someone from outside the US make my phone ring?
There are applications to block international calls but that only helps if the number is not spoofed. People that have SS7 lines into the telco system can spoof as just about any number. I wanted to kill those circuits but my employer at the time said, "they are paying their bills, arent they?". This was in the 90's. I guess the laws are every so slowly starting to catch up.
> I wanted to kill those circuits but my employer at the time said, "they are paying their bills, arent they?".
This is loud to me, mostly because the last time I got non-TCPA compliant texts trying to solicit business, the VOIP provider refused to give the company's actual name or contact info.
Mainland China lets people opt out of phone calls that come from outside of the Mainland...it's a feature one can turn off on an on their mobile plan.
Calls from outside the Mainland always cause a warning to pop up on the receiving user's phone that says something like "this call is coming from outside of the mainland, be careful of being scammed".
I can imagine there are many reasons the US doesn't fix this..one of which probably that much of US customer service is outsourced to people outside the US!
>I can imagine there are many reasons the US doesn't fix this..one of which probably that much of US customer service is outsourced to people outside the US!
This. Gotta have your round robin of foreign call centers be able to spoof the main customer service line numbers for whoever they're contracted to represent.
Personally I think that should all be done in software these days, not something supported at the teleco level but what do I know.
This isn't even an unreasonable feature to implement. We just need something like SSL certs: Has Legitimate Business holding phone number XYZ granted other entity the right to use their identity?
Exactly. There are plenty of legitimate reasons to spoof numbers, but all of them are people acting on behalf of the owner of the number being spoofed. Enforce that.
An easy way to "fix" the problem for closet dwelling US nerds like us who've decided we don't want to use the telephone anymore. Everyone else in the world isn't like us, and have to actually use their phones to talk to real people everywhere. Pretty much everyone has family abroad, etc... This just isn't a serious suggestion.
Which is why this is likely to end up getting rolled back. Surely most of these providers are dominated by spam. But equally surely all of them carry some legitimate traffic (or else this particular trigger would have been pulled already).
There will be friendly fire from this policy decision, almost certainly.
I'd love a solution that would fix the problem for everyone, sure, but since the evidence is that is apparently impossible, I'll happily take one that only helps a subset.
In the US? Most normie people I know barely even know anyone that's visited overseas anywhere other than Canada and Mexico, much less stay connected to family living abroad. Tons of people don't even regularly talk to people outside of state they live in.
Don't get me wrong it's not entirely uncommon and can be common in immigrant communities but outside of that unless you've got wealthy globe-trotting family you probably don't have anyone to talk to overseas. Its something far from "pretty much everyone".
> Why can someone from outside the US make my phone ring? Why can't I opt out of calls sourced internationally?
Because spam call centers pay much more to access phone networks than you do, therefore telcos care about them, and not you. Plus you NEED a phone and they know that.
Even when the scammers are out of the US, at some point in the chain a US based telephone company is accepting inbound connections that don't provide the validation required.
I'll definitely believe it when I don't see those calls, but I could not be more in favor of turning the phone network into a much more "trusted" type of system -- similar to how SSL certs used to be prior to the Let's Encrypt era, where it requires some form of validation of something besides 'existence':
Conceptually, someone US-based should have to cryptographically sign, with their license to continue participating at stake, an assertion that the source phone number is real. People should be free to configure their devices or phone accounts (A) what countries to accept calls from and (B) whether to accept unverified calls whose numbers are presumably spoofed.
Note: i'm aware that SHAKEN/STIR or whatever exists and shares some of that idea, I'm just looking forward to full adoption of something so that I can make those choices described above.
Combine this next with ability to report numbers who spam (with the Apple/Google duopoly it should be trivially easy to put a "report spam" button in the call UI) and sanction providers (first financially and eventually with revocation of their credential to sign calls).
Maybe 30 years ago it would have been seen as too draconian to prevent someone from being able to call others anonymously but the Internet exists and provides ample avenues for those cliche use cases like "whistleblower needs to talk to journalists" so I'm 100% happy to have 'burdensome regulation' here if it stops scammers from ruining the phone as a usable channel for urgent information like "Your car is ready to pick up from the shop" or "Hi, you're the emergency contact for ____ and they are headed to the hospital."
> Conceptually, someone US-based should have to cryptographically sign, with their license to continue participating at stake, an assertion that the source phone number is real.
But phone numbers aren't real. They aren't any more real than an IP address. It's arbitrary. This is how VOIP systems work. You just assign a number from your block.
I totally get this, however they are assigned -- meaning someone is responsible for them. If you own the range 212-555-0000 through 9999 and you sign calls for spammers as coming from that range, those numbers should be revoked from your control, or you should be denied the ability to sign those outbound calls/texts so that your calls appear as likely fake.
Ideally anyone who owns numbers would stop letting literally anybody do anything with their numbers (the way they do today) because they don't want to lose the numbers or to get banned from operating a PSTN-connected system.
The outcome I'm going for is that if you're a spammer you can't find any US phone number owners who will let you use their numbers so you can only send "unsigned" calls that are obviously spam, or sign calls as originating from irresponsible countries, which are easily filtered out by those of us who don't have any friends in the Phillipines or whatever (I get a lot of "DMV" threat texts from +63)
Lots of folks hit the nail on the head, it's a structural problem with a telco network that was never designed to be open. I wrote about it back in 2019 in case folks are interested [0]
Here's to many more. Some may be downcast because they feel like its a drop in the ocean, but many drops an ocean do make. Hopefully its the start of actually enforcing some of our laws on the internet.
It used to be as bad as others describe here, if not worse. A few years ago my 92 yo mother disconnected her land line because she was getting 20 calls a day. The spammers had figured out the number range of her retirement village, and hammered it mercilessly.
But other day I was reflecting on how oddly silent it has become on the phone spam front. This article made me wonder - just how long had it been since I received a spam call or SMS. So I looked at the phones block list. It seems the answer is 4 months of spammless bliss on my phone.
The ACMA (Australian Communications and Media Authority - the government body that polices this sort of thing) have been hammering on about this for years, apparently without success. I had given up on them. Yet now in 2025, they had a total victory, they've annihilated all phone spam, and I didn't notice for months. No media release, no trumpeting from the roof tops. They just quietly and effectively did their job.
I salute you sirs and madams. Good work. Not just good - excellent work. In fact brilliant. Your efforts make me proud to be an Australian.
> Yet now in 2025, they had a total victory, they've annihilated all phone spam, and I didn't notice for months. No media release, no trumpeting from the roof tops. They just quietly and effectively did their job.
Looks like a lot of small ISPs have been procrastinating about getting their robocalling mitigation/compliance policies implemented, and didn't think the FCC was serious about the “Final Warning”. They'll get their stuff fixed eventualy.
It is highly configurable with every feature I've ever wanted but could never find for call filtering in the the app store. I've essentially set mine so that if the calling number is not in my contacts, or is not a number I've called in the last 90 days, the phone never runs and the call is sent to voice mail. But it supports lots of other mechanisms to filter with like regex, or how many times the number has called within a given timeframe.
Something changed about 1 year ago where the spam calls I get are 10x higher than in the past. It got so bad I had to change how I use my phone. Any caller not in my contact list goes immediately to voicemail.
I’ve tried several robocall blockers, but they tend to cause connectivity issues.
If anyone else has this problem, what are you using to prevent robocalls?
I just stopped answering any/all unknown phone numbers. Only my contacts get me without leaving a message. I'm sure it's caused me to lose business, but I can't find a better way of maintaining my own productivity/sanity. I do disclose this practice in the outgoing message, and encourage callers to text me if they don't get an answer. Whatever software the robocallers use doesn't seem to be smart enough to clock this as an alternative channel, but I'm sure some AI product will make this worse.
Pixel phones are excellent at blocking spam calls. In fact I will not let my mother use any other phone despite her desperately wanting an iPhone.
My SO has an iPhone and she gets at least 3-4 spam calls a day. I get probably 1 a week that gets through the filter, which you can screen with a bot anyway.
Same. I have a Pixel on Google Fi and get like one spam call every 2 weeks. And it always shows "possible spam" in big red letters.
My girlfriend on the other hand gets several a day with a Samsung on A&TT. And it's worse for her because she is a real estate agent and can't afford not to take calls.
Interesting. To be clear I get spam calls but they are rejected or screened automatically. If I look through my call history I can see some them.
There are most certainly other factors at play.
My wife recently switched from a Samsung to a new iPhone which prompted my observation (not a pixel phone of course but still it got worse for her). All anecdata.
Robocalls are a huge pain but just as annoying is non-stop spam text messages. No idea why Apple doesn't allow for keyword filtering. Spam and robocalls are mostly nonexistent problems on Android.
It's not perfect/ideal, but you can basically accomplish keyword filtering using a shortcut powered by a message automation. I've done something similar where during the political season I would have all incoming texts (from unknown numbers) run through an LLM to determine if it was a political message. If so, it'd get deleted immediately.
The only Google service that I still regularly use is Google Voice. They've partnered with NoMoRobo and their call screening really works. I get 2-3 spam calls and a few spam SMS texts per day, and they are all filtered so I don't see them unless I look in the Spam folder.
It’s important to make it clear to Americans that this problem is mostly solved in other countries. It should be possible to end this tomorrow in the US.
Spam calls in the UK for example, are rare. All of the spam calls I get are from my US desk number.
For KYC-like needs, foreign companies or bad actors are registering their LLC in Wyoming which satisfies the requirements, according to a friend of mine who’s in the business…
Maybe I'm just old, but I remember the tv advertisements for the dubious 900 numbers (remember Miss Cleo?) that you could call, but you had to pay for the time.
Is there any law that says that I can't just get one of those for use as my personal number and then give that # out as my contact info?
Before I got my phone number, a woman by the name of "Sade" has the number. Recently I've been getting at least one call per day from the same company regarding an extended auto warranty.
I've told them politely that this is the wrong number, they keep calling. I've asked them to take my number off their list and they happily agree to, but they keep calling. I've threatened to contact the FCC is they keep calling yet....they keep calling. I've tried to block their number multiple times, but they just keep fucking calling from different numbers.
I honestly don't get the logic of these places. "Hey this guy has told us 20 times in all manner of ways to stop calling him....but I think he might buy an extended warranty on the 21st call!!"
Can someone explain to me what the logic of these places is? It just seems like an absolute brain-dead strategy.
I never answer any calls from non-contacts because I assume answering automatically flags the number as "a live one" meaning "potential target who picks up their phone" in any number of nefarious databases. If an outside/unknown number needs me they can leave a message and I'll call them back if the message reveals them to be legit.
I used to get ~6-10 spam calls per day and I would do what you describe: ignore the call. Then I started picking up, immediately muting myself, and waiting. The auto-dialer gives up after exactly 10 seconds of silence and hangs up. This has reduced my spam calls to 1-3 per WEEK.
The downside is sometimes real people call (like a contractor your landlord hired), hear silence, and don't say anything themselves because they're waiting for a "hello?". Whereas ignoring the call would let them actually leave a voicemail which would be useful. As I learned recently: sometimes real people don't call back a 2nd time.
This will take a few times but... That is when you interact with them, maliciously. Basically cost them time and money. Have them on there for an hour or more. Set phone down come back every 2-3 mins and make sure they are still there. Make sure you have them repeat everything, your connection is not so good. Drag it for at least 20-60 mins. Then at the last second back out on the sale and mention you wanted on their do not call list at the end. As well as a copy of their DNC policy priority mailed. "you know what I am going to ask you put me on your do not call list and I want a copy of your do not call policy just like the last 3 times".
You break that support persons numbers and they may add you. At worst they will call again and you cost them more money.
What happened here is that the dealership sold that girl's data to many companies. You can tell one of the companies to stop calling, and they will happily remove you from their database, but there are many of them with your phone number.
I've lost track of how many times I've seen people say something like, "I gave them something so they would go away, but they keep calling me." So yes, bothering people until you get some money from them is probably viable. Keep in mind that it doesn't have to work on everyone. If it works on 1% of their victims it's probably still profitable.
Between the 0 real security and the generational jump in capability fraud now has because of AI, there is no excuse for the continued existence of traditional voice or SMS. We'll never be able to solve compromised devices or social engineering of others, but the idea that anyone/any software in the world can push a message to a device and then immediately communicate with that person is absurd.
At the risk of going too cliché on AI speculation, imagine a hostile AI (or just a non-aligned one under the control of a big nation-state adversary) with nothing but ability to send spoofed texts and calls, and a mission to harm US interests.
It could easily set up thousands of people as unknowing patsies to commit mass terrorist acts, just by giving the AI a small amount of crypto to use in "paying people for gig work" to do tasks. It could start people off with busywork like ferrying harmless packages back and forth, and the ones who proved reliable, eventually would get a much less harmless package to be delivered somewhere sensitive.
That could all be orchestrated by human terrorists of course, but it's so much more effective if they could do it in 100 cities at once without almost any (knowing) human labor, and without any detectable foreign involvement.
Or just make callers cover all the costs, like in some countries. Still, I really wish there were an option to charge incoming callers as you suggested—because honestly, about 90% of calls I get outside my circle are unsolicited. That way, only the 10% that truly matter would reach me. Right now, I’m on a strict “no-ring” policy: if a call turns out to be legitimate, I’ll call back. But nobody gets real-time PSTN access to me anymore—it’s simply not sustainable.
In the US, the receiver effectively covers the cost of mobile calls—though it’s a bit nuanced, so apologies for any lack of clarity. You’re essentially paying for incoming calls if you’re on a metered plan, since those minutes get deducted. With most rate plans now being unlimited, this cost is somewhat hidden.
In Japan (the only other system I’m familiar with), it works differently: the caller is charged for the recipient’s end, while the receiver pays nothing. For example, calling a mobile phone from a landline costs more to account for the mobile portion. I remember years ago using a prepaid phone card from a payphone to call a mobile number—the balance drained incredibly fast. This is one reason why younger generations in Japan rarely rely on PSTN for routine calls, since it can quickly become expensive.
Yes, it used to be around 15 cents or so to send or receive an SMS (depending on the rate plan). But, as with calls, unlimited messaging has become the norm these days.
“ The FCC is doing everything in its power to fight back against these malicious and illegal calls.”
Umm, no it isn’t. This is 2025. The technology to fix this is not complicated, but the people who can implement it simply don’t want to.
If Verizon/ATT/T Mo got fined $25 every time a robo call went through they’d find a way to stop it really fast. Create KYC verification systems and use metadata to route non-verified calls to a spam voicemail folder, problem solved.
I have received a scam text message every day for the last few months. I haven’t received one yet today. Next time someone says something snide about the government remind them of this enforcement.
Why doesn't the FCC put together a new communications solution to replace phone calls? We already have capable devices and robust infrastructure. What's stopping them from dropping a new protocol on top of that?
The costs of maintaining this legacy solution only seem to be getting higher by the day.
Maybe shutting down the entire phone system would be too disruptive, but perhaps we could start by rethinking incoming calls for individuals—or at least shift the social norm around them. In a sense, that trend has already begun, since most people won’t pick up if the number is unfamiliar. And in circles where multi-modal communication is the default, how often do you actually get a legitimate call over PSTN anymore?
Legitimacy aside, the only people who still call me without prior arrangement tend to be those who assume they’re entitled to my time and attention on demand. The phone has always been a disruptive form of communication—even if every single call were legitimate (which is far from reality)—because it disregards the boundaries of the recipient’s time.
That’s why I stopped giving anyone real-time PSTN access. For me, it’s voicemail-only now, and honestly, it’s the best decision I’ve made for cutting down on annoyances.
I'm not one of the people down-voting this, I'm inclined to sort of agree with you. Where you lost me was attaching files to an email. Are you really suggesting this solution has fewer problems than telephones?
Well, isn’t that essentially what voicemail is? We already have a mechanism to send voices as files—it’s just that not all voicemail systems deliver them in that format.
It wouldn’t solve everything, but considering how many scammers rely on real-time urgency in their calls, shifting phone communication toward asynchronous messages could actually help. It would undercut that pressure tactic, and it would also make record-keeping much easier.
At this point I'm firmly of the opinion that "leak this 10 digit code and anyone on the planet can call me relentlessly" is just a broken model. Maybe that worked better when the calls carried a significant cost, but clearly the scammers are able to do this sort of thing at scale.
In practice of course, my phone is 100% permanently in "do not disturb" mode and does not ring at all unless I've added you to my contact list. Which means the scammer, already pretending to live in small town rural USA (where they most certainly are not) has to correctly guess the number of one of my relatives before my pocket actually rings. It also means I'm unreachable for anything actually important that isn't in my contact list. That's an annoying price.
I'm not sure what the correct end solution is, but the current solution seems to be very broken.
Yup.
I didn’t realize how bad it got until my father stopped answering calls. It turned out he was getting (no hyperbole) 90 calls a day from spammers and vendors he had no relationship with.
I used the iOS filter, the AT&T filter, and turned on the shortcut so the phone doesn’t ring unless the caller is in his contacts.
The problem is that it already changed his behavior. He doesn’t answer the phone anymore, even if it is a person he recognizes. The Pavlovian response to his ringtone is still very negative.
I’m sure there is a non-trivial percentage of the US who already viscerally hates receiving phone calls.
Can you share those countermeasures you mentioned? I haven’t been able to find anything for the iPhone.
This sounds stupid, but it worked for me. Change the ringtone.
That's wild. I'm in the US, and I get maybe 1-2 spam calls a month. I get more spam texts than calls, though not many of those either. I've never done anything special to try to prevent them, so I wonder what the difference is.
My theory is age. I get very few calls. Neither does my wife. My mother in law is called multiple times a day. I assume there’s some basic demographic data available out there and they’re targeting retirees because they know (statistically speaking) they’re an easy hit.
I think an important factor is also how long you had the same number. I switch numbers every couple of years because I get a new contract and moving the number to the new company is such a hassle. Over time you share your number with more and more companies and people who sell it or get breached.
My parents had their number for ~30 years. I never get spam calls or texts. They get one once a week or so (this is in Germany, we get a lot fewer of these calls).
FWIW, I am in my 20s and receive many phone calls. But maybe your theory is correct and I am an outlier.
My 86 year old father regularly gets calls from his "grandson" (who does not exist)... who is in jail, and needs help.
You don't need to be 90. I'm half that age with the same behavior.
I suggest the caller stakes a little bit of money as a deposit that is, by default, returned to them within a day... But an angered recipient can retaliate by choosing to seize the deposit.
I think this works for many situations:
1. Between amicable friends and businesses/clients, nothing changes.
2. If there was a normal relationship, but one side starts unfairly seizing call-deposits... Well, maybe it's time to no longer have them as a vendor/customer/friend.
3. Spammers either eat the additional cost, or they have to work harder to make sure they only call people who are unlikely to retaliate.
_____
There's still a problem where someone asks to be called (the number needn't actually be theirs) as a way to trick the caller into losing money... But even then, I think it represents an improvement over what we've got now.
Yes, but this is probably best instituted at the telecom layer as there are fewer people to educate / complain / litigate drama. Telecoms who self-police don't need it and if they fall from grace they can post collateral to be let back in. I predict that suddenly the telecoms who previously turned a blind eye towards scam call-centers will suddenly become very good at pursuing scammers once they become a threat rather than an asset.
If I could just block the numbers, or auto send to voicemail, that my phone already flags as Spam/Telemarketing this wouldn’t be so frustrating for me. I do need my phone to ring for unknowns/outside my contacts numbers, so the blocking ability I need isn’t available (on iOS anyway.) I am left manually doing this when something rings if it is flagged, I will ignore it and if it’s unknown and not flagged I will answer it. It’s not perfect but could easily cut more than half of my current interruptions.
For what it's worth, upcoming iOS 26 has a new screening feature. The idea is that calls from numbers you don't have a connection with will be asked to briefly identify themselves and why they're calling. It'll show you this text and give you the choice to block/send-to-voicemail/ignore/accept.
The problem I have with my iPhone is not callers, thankfully, it’s random iMessage from emails spamming me constantly, as many as 5 per day. The “filter unknown senders” option does not appear to work at all for these scammers.
> The result was that people generally hung up and didn't leave a message.
This sounds perfect to me. Not only do I not have to talk to spammers, I don't even need to listen to their messages.
There's also a "send unsaved numbers to voicemail" option if you don't like the call screening, and a separate toggle that puts calls/voicemails from unknown numbers on a separate list from the main one.
So iOS will automatically confirm your number for spammers? That's nice...
I use call screening with Google Fi. I recently added my number to the FCC block list, and they made some recent changes, so it's gotten a lot better.
I did ask if I could just send all calls not in my contact list to get screened, and that idea seemed to "blow their mind," though.
You mean the donotcall.gov database? What changes have they made?
When they are screening a call, if I push the button to answer the call, the call comes to me immediately.
They used to play back a 10 to 20 second "polite" message that just annoyed everybody.
Yeah. I'm not sure why Spam Risk rings because it almost certainly is spam. But I do get doctor offices, service people related to something I'm dealing with at the moment, emergencies related to family members, etc. that are legit. I suspect the permanently do not disturb faction are mostly in a different life stage than many of us.
I'd probably add that the area code + exchange calls from an area code that you don't actually live in are spam as well though don't see those as much as I once did.
As others have alluded, there are unknown third parties who must call you (and you would want their call). For example, the hospital: something has happened with a loved one. We can probably solve this problem with certification. Show me your medical license (or hospital scale equivalent) and you get to make unsolicited calls. Then we allow people to select certified unsolicited calls by category: medical, financial, civic, etc.
Even in this case, I'd rather get a text message. A mere call doesn't provide any context and is not informative. Maybe your loved one showed up in their ER or maybe it's a billing issue.
The text message should explain the nature of the call and which number to call in reply.
I think there are HIPAA issues there. You can't just SMS a random number medical information, it ends up being something like "$HOSPITAL has a message for you, log in at $RANDOM_EHR or call us back at $NUMBER".
> The text message should explain the nature of the call and which number to call in reply.
That’s basically how most SMS scams work.
Are phone calls less scammy?
It seems strange to me that the solution would be “mimic SMS scams”.
I agree that a text can help provide context, and I definitely prefer it for non-emergency communications, but sometimes people want to go straight to synchronous communication so they can discuss urgent details without delay.
> The text message should explain the nature of the call and which number to call in reply.
You lost me here. If I get an unsolicited text message claiming to be a doctor who needs to speak to me urgently about a loved one's medical emergency, I'm not calling back via any number other than the hospital's front desk or switchboard. Invoking an emergency and asking you to call an unverified phone number is scamming 101.
I don't have this problem at all thanks to Pixel Phone. That spam screen feature alone is keeping me on the Android ecosystem. I don't recall one spam call in the last year. And legitimate new caller (not on my contact list) can still reach me after like 5 seconds with the bot.
I've received I think two total spam calls in the years since I ported my cell number to a voip service and set up an IVR in front that just says to press any number. It also blocks the very, very few robocalls I might actually want, and occasionally some company will refuse to accept a voip number as a cell number, but most everything just works fine.
Imagine if the concept of a phone call did not exist. We still have these computers in our pockets, but without the history of the telephone system.
Then, one day, an app developer thought: Wouldn't it be cool if there was an app that would interrupt what the user was doing, play a sound, vibrate the device, and put up a full-screen dialog, that this all could be activated remotely by any other device by simply typing in a short numeric code, and that if the recipient pushed a button, the remote attacker could send audio data and activate the recipient's microphone? Most app stores would classify this as malware, yet here we are today with devices that all have built-in apps that do exactly this, and only because of how normalized the legacy idea of a "phone call" is.
> Every app store that exists would classify this as malware
Considering Facebook ([0] and [1] to name a few) is still available, I think that's a pretty high bar to clear.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44401406
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44169115
That‘s a great example of how technology can change the rules. In the era of rotary phones hardly anyone would have felt the need to describe it that way. But nowadays it‘s appropriate.
> Wouldn't it be cool if there was an app that would interrupt what the user was doing
It seems like this sort of idea is extremely common, considering how many websites love preventing me from viewing their content by slapping multiple modals asking me to sign up for a newsletter and/or to get my permission to be tracked using cookies.
It also shows up in native apps, in the form of some prompt asking the user if they are enjoying the app. NO! I do not enjoy being funneled into an App Store review or any similar bullshit. If I like using the app, I'll use it. If I don't, I won't. Stop asking me!
I build websites for a living and I'm constantly battling requests to infect our sites with these god-awful modals. It's like sitting down at a restaurant, being handed a menu, only to have the menu taken away seconds later and being asked if you'll return in the future. Not only is it rude, it's the wrong time to ask the question. Let me read the damn article or whatever, and when I'm done, if there's a newsletter form, MAYBE I'll sign up. Let me eat my meal, and if I enjoy it I'll think about returning.
I’ve tried this method, but it didn’t work out for many reasons. I often have to deal with people I don’t personally know for various reasons (mechanic, lawn care, doctors, school staff, etc.), and I have missed too many important calls like this, so I basically just have to deal with it. About 50% of the time it seems to be caught with “spam risk” or something like that, otherwise I just use my judgment.
There are so many simple solutions, just like phone privacy is fixable (firewall your phone)
I just don't think anyone wants to fix it. Why can't apple let us send "spam risk" to voicemail?
Like adding extensions, possibly with passwords to your phone line.
It would be good to give an extension or password to friends, or one for each business, which can be automated to input with a pause after answering, and it gets through (or further) if possible.
we should have phone rules just like mail rules.
> I'm not sure what the correct end solution is, but the current solution seems to be very broken.
I think one of two high-level approaches:
We could be ultra-strict about who is allowed to call whom, and have penalties and enforcement similar to how we police credit card fraud.
Or, we could do away with phone numbers and instead come up with a scheme where you show a QR-like code to allow someone to call you; and then you can revoke that permission if/when it is abused.
---
Finally, I think the crux of the problem is that in the US we tolerate far too much of this kind of behavior. (Unsolicited contact for the purpose of sales.) Without a corresponding publicity campaign, there's far too much cultural tolerance of allowing anyone to contact anyone at any time for any reason to accept the kind of change needed to truly contain SPAM.
I mean numbers are as terrible as social security numbers. For both of them you can take your number, add one, and get another valid number.
I'm also not sure what the correct solution is but I'm sure there's some pretty smart people out there that have some really good ideas and understand the issue with a lot of complexity (aka: I won't believe anyone who starts with "It's so simple, you just...")
> I'm also not sure what the correct solution is but I'm sure there's some pretty smart people out there that have some really good ideas and understand the issue with a lot of complexity
While there are certainly technical challenges and various trade-offs, those are not the main reason we're still getting buried in spam calls. My understanding is that smart people have already come up with good solutions which can be implemented at relatively low cost and which would be substantially effective - but the solutions have not been universally deployed because:
1. They generally require coordinated action between governments, standards bodies, regulators and disparate companies at different levels of the telecom ecosystem. These parties have divergent processes, goals and opinions on who should bear the costs and/or responsibilities for implementation, enforcement, etc.
2. The major U.S. telecom companies make money by transiting calls they know (or should know) are very likely spam. They don't want to give up that revenue so they find ways to not fully adopt, delay or weaken various proposals. These can include the motivated leveraging of legitimate technical issues or concerns to complicate, defer and otherwise hinder the processes in which they are involved as significant stakeholders. Many mobile phone operators now also earn revenue selling spam call blocking as a separate feature or part of more expensive plans. If the problem was substantially fixed they would lose that revenue.
3. There are various political stakeholders, industries and companies (not the off-shore, bottom-feeding spammer/scammers) which have a vested interest in keeping unsolicited calls legal. These include some of the more legit-ish forms of domestic telemarketers such as recruiters, fund-raisers, political campaigns, pollsters, market survey companies, etc. These companies have industry associations which hire lobbyists and make political donations to ensure their particular use is exempt from any regulations and that their cost of doing business doesn't go up to comply with the new system. Carving out all these exceptions and exemptions significantly complicates and/or weakens most technical solutions.
This is why I believe there is currently zero hope of any significant improvement despite the FCC issuing positive sounding announcements exactly like this one every 6 to 18 months for the last ten years. These FCC announcements rarely mention the workarounds, exemptions, appeals processes, delayed or unfunded enforcement which industry insiders already know will allow spam calls to continue with no substantial change. These announcements are merely the FCC fulfilling their political role of appearing to regulate and taking steps to mitigate the problem. Now the FCC managers who are measured on "do something about spam calls" can check that box on their KPIs. However all the various parties in the ecosystem have already taken steps to ensure whatever the FCC is announcing won't really work well or can be worked around relatively easily. For example, I'm sure most of the people behind the companies supposedly banned in this announcement (or their large offshore spammer/scammer customers) have already made other arrangements to continue operating uninterrupted. I hate that it's this way but the reality is, until the three fundamental blockers listed above change, this is all just "Regulatory Theater" much like the TSA's "Security Theater" performances.
> In practice of course, my phone is 100% permanently in "do not disturb" mode and does not ring at all unless I've added you to my contact list.
I go even further, unless there is a good reason for someone to have the ability disturb me, they're not whitelisted. I have no phones that ring unless it's for a specific and temporary purpose.
A ringing phone is an anachronism, it's incredible to me that people let anyone bother them in this way these days. Its an invasion of ones personal space.
It also means I'm unreachable for anything actually important that isn't in my contact list. That's an annoying price.
Calling me is now the equivalent to wanting to send me a telegram. The phone system is broken, we all know it's broken, and yet you want my phone number? Send me an email, it's just as fast and has better tools for managing scumbags. Unknown callers are silenced and go to voicemail. Wife is in an auto accident? State troopers know how voicemail works. Kid is in trouble? It can wait 30 seconds while I wait for the VM to come through (and, haha, trick question: we don't have kids).
OTOH, I grew up in the era of landlines and payphones, and well before answering machines (old school VM). People still got in accidents, kids still got sick at school and needed to come home, doctors still called, and we all got along just fine. Because EMTs still took people to the hospital, the school nurse still took care of your kid, and the doctor either called back or sent a letter, and the world move on despite not being able to instantly reach people 24x7. I realize I sound like one of those "we didn't have $SAFETY_FEATURE, and we lived", when in reality not all of us did. But we aren't talking about lawn darts, for the most part I think we did get along just fine. (Auto accidents and breakdowns are something made better by cell phones, but in the day lots of folks had CB radios. ::shrug::)
> Wife is in an auto accident?
Both times my wife was in a car accident, and once that my son was, in the past few years, an unknown phone call was not necessary as either their phone or their car immediately alerted me.
Frankly, I'd like lawn darts back.
>I'm not sure what the correct end solution is, but the current solution seems to be very broken.
If we just made it impossible for phone calls to reach US destinations if they originate from a short list of foreign countries, would that actually do anything to address this issue?
I get relentless text and phone spam calls - both robotic and with humans - from just a few voice over Internet platforms. Bandwidth.com, Neutral Tandem, and ALL the brands associated with Sinch (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinch_AB) like Inteliquent. Many of these companies got cease and desist orders in the past from the FTC. It didn’t help anything. We need to see them fined, shut down, and executives jailed.
How would one discover which VOIP providers are the source of calls?
I wrote a little tool which can do lookups: https://github.com/evidlo/nanpa_lookup
There's no free source of this information anywhere. The only affordable option is telcodata.us
What do you do when these lookups return the company that owns the number but the company says that they are not in control of the number? E.g, I have one number that keeps harassing me that reports as Verizon but Verizon says they have not been with Verizon since 2024.
Also great tool, thank you
Did you get the data in the db from telcodata.us?
Just hack into SS7: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVyu7NB7W6Y
> We need to see them fined, shut down, and executives jailed.
Is that what European countries do? Is that why there are no robocalls there?
I'm not positive, but i think they charge an astronomical amount for calls that don't originate from a local calling prefix. Of course you can get those, but some countries require ID.
Mainly I know that calling from a voip number was really expensive when I tried to set something up for a family member going on vacation to Europe. That probably cuts back on a lot of spam calls.
These are all platforms with many different products built but others on top of them. Shutting down all abuse is a cat and mouse game and not something they can "just do" if given tighter rules
This seems solvable. Put the person most closely traceable to the source of the spam in jail, like a form of KYC laws. If you can't identify the actual human who is causing you to put spam into the network, or that person is outside of your country's jurisdiction, then you are the one who goes to jail. If you don't want to go to jail, then don't accept calls from someone you can't point the finger at.
This is how Germany deals with torrent piracy. The net effect is that it was illegal to run a public WiFi hotspot until a special exemption was made for it. In 2017.
Onvoy VOIP numbers are rife with scammers using them (Sinch).
Really sad how these rules do nothing to stop them
Google voice does operate on bandwidth.com btw.
uhhh I use Bandwidth at high volume for non-spammy reasons in my app. Please give me a heads up before they're shut down :P
Shut one down, another pops up in its place.
Not if we actually put the people financing these companies in prison.
Ok shut that one down too.
Shut that one down and jail the execs too. The number of people willing to take that chance is finite; it is more finite when the penalty is seen to be consistently applied.
This is why executives need to be held personally responsible when they direct a company to wilfully, blatantly, and repeatedly disregard laws to the detriment of society. These are people who should be in prison for a time, and barred from serving as an officer of a corporation for more time after that. Eventually people get the message; you don't get to break laws just because you hide behind the name of a company.
"Limited Liability" should not mean "No Liability"
Those people are who the entire system is built to benefit. They won't be held accountable in most countries.
Death to good, long live perfection!
Sinch just keeps acquiring one company after the other and turning them into the new spam channel. Weirdly the only responsible player seems to be Twilio. The others refuse to identify the spammers that are their customers, and keep saying it’s not their responsibility since they’re a “wholesaler” (their words).
Twilio has historically been a customer of these other companies, so not really at the same level. Though that's been changing recently
The PSTN is simply not sustainable. It’s a relic of a time when there was no practical way to authenticate or validate calls. Today, with malicious actors able to dial in from anywhere in the world at negligible cost, the system is fundamentally unequipped to handle the abuse it faces.
Efforts like STIR/SHAKEN exist, but they’re little more than a band-aid—and not a particularly effective one—because the underlying network was never designed with resilience or trust in mind.
I know some people push back on this view, often pointing to edge cases where PSTN’s ubiquity still provides value. But as trust in the system erodes, so does its relevance. And if the majority of people already avoid answering calls from numbers they don’t recognize, its practical utility is clearly diminished.
This is a corollary to Chesterton’s fence. unsignedint’s public good.
If you can’t explain the benefit then you can’t tear it down. The PSTN guarantees that all telco operators interoperate. Without it you get what happened with instant messaging. AKA walled gardens. You take for granted the ability to call an iPhone with an Android.
The FCC is responsible for maintaining trust, which they have done here. They can incentivize telco providers to curb the spam activity. You don’t need to throw the baby out with the bath water.
I think Chesterton’s fence is a fair analogy—but it only works if the “fence” still serves a protective function. With the PSTN, the fence is riddled with holes, and the people meant to maintain it can’t keep up with the erosion. Interoperability was indeed its greatest strength, but today that same universality is what lets malicious actors reach everyone at trivial cost.
Comparing PSTN to instant messaging walled gardens is interesting, but I’d argue the real parallel is email: a federated, open standard that also suffers from spam and abuse, yet still manages to limp along thanks to heavy filtering and layered trust systems. The PSTN never evolved those trust layers; instead, it relied on scarcity (call cost, geographic constraints) to keep abuse in check. Once those costs collapsed, the trust model collapsed with them.
As for the FCC, sure, they can try to incentivize carriers. But the fact that we need constant regulatory intervention just to keep basic trust afloat suggests the system is no longer structurally sound. Band-aids like STIR/SHAKEN prove the point: we’re bolting authentication onto a protocol that never envisioned it. That might extend its life a little, but it doesn’t make the foundation any less fragile.
So the question isn’t whether the PSTN once had value (it did, massively), but whether preserving it now delivers more value than the cost of propping it up. If a good chunk of people already treat unknown calls as spam until proven otherwise, then the social contract around the PSTN has already been broken.
> Comparing PSTN to instant messaging walled gardens is interesting, but I’d argue the real parallel is email: a federated, open standard that also suffers from spam and abuse, yet still manages to limp along thanks to heavy filtering and layered trust systems.
I think you're absolutely right to draw that parallel. But, today's email landscape isn't much of a federated open standard. It's a web of trust and distrust, filters, and deliverability issues. It's real work to maintain an email server and attain high deliverability with other email services. So much so that most don't even do it anymore. Most email is just delivered by a few large providers.
Really, email is suffering from a lot of the same issues that PSTN also suffers from. But email providers just decided to "solve" the problem themselves, mostly by taking a heavy hand at blocking things and deciding they don't really care if you're not a big provider.
[delayed]
I have been using Pixel phones since they came out and currently have a Pixel 9. They have EXCELLENT spam call blocking. There are a couple other comments below that reference this but I wanted to highlight it at the top. There are other reasons I like Google's phones, but this tops the list.
The assistant integration is great for this reason too. I occasionally get calls come through that are likely SPAM but I've learned to let the assistant answer for me. If it's a spammer, then I waste just a small amount of their time.
It's especially helpful that Google's Assistant has gotten good enough, AND that people making legit but unsolicited calls (like doctor's offices), that people calling don't hang up right away and actually answer the assistant. So I can see what they say and then answer when it's a legit call.
The ratio of SPAM calls to legit calls from unrecognized numbers is still higher for SPAM. But, the frequency is low enough (maybe a few a week), and dealing with them is so easy, that the distraction/annoyance factor is very low to the point that I'm not personally bothered by it anymore.
I've tried to get my grandma to switch to a Pixel phone for her main phone number at home, just for SPAM blocking, but she won't. I don't know how she stands getting multiple calls per hour, it's crazy to put up with when we are there.
On a side note, today and yesterday I've been bombarded with spam calls. Even got one while writing this comment. All of which have my same area code, which is for a location I haven't live at for over 15 years. No voice mail, nothing. It's not even this bad around election time.
Btw, if you haven't already, you can sign up for the FCC's Do Not Call list[0]. While obviously this isn't going to solve everything, it does make it illegal for legitimate companies to call you. Absent this incident, it did appear to have a significant effect in reducing spam calls when I signed up years ago. Also, here's some info about junk mail[1]. It costs about $6 and lasts 10 years.
[0] https://www.donotcall.gov/index.html
[1] https://consumer.ftc.gov/how-stop-junk-mail
The do not call list seems to be a "Spam me, you brute" list.
In the beginning, they seemed to take their job seriously, but I doubt that has been the case for many years.
Right after SHAKEN/STIR was passed, I got zero spoofed calls. I did get a few robocalls, but they weren't spoofed.
For a month or so. So that shows the problem can be solved, legislatively.
Then, they started coming back, and now, almost every call I get, is spoofed. This includes some legit ones.
Also, legit callers should keep in mind that the autodialer companies they employ, might also moonlight as spammers, so they get blacklisted. I have had quite a number of legit calls get listed as spam.
Cynically, I feel as if politicians are unwilling to get tough on these, because they (or their proxies) use them. That seems to be both sides of the aisle.
Cynically, I feel as if politicians are unwilling to get tough on these, because they (or their proxies) use them.
Of course they do, and they voted themselves an exception. Same reason some small business in Redmond, WA isn't allowed to put out a sandwich board sign, but 10 months before every election every g*ddamned piece of dirt in Redmond has a political sign stuck into it.
Funny enough, when that Roy Moore scandal was unfolding I was living in The South and I kept getting calls and voicemails from someone named "Bernie Bernstein" who was definitely trying their best impression of Bernie Sanders while telling me about how Democrats are pedophiles.
As well as "If you leave a message there's a decent chance I'm going to call you back in 30 seconds, I don't want to start a game of phone tag."
If I don't know your number AND I'm not expecting a call, I 100% will not answer it. If you're legit, sorry, you are the exception, not the typical case. Don't blame me, blame the spammers.
The modern world is absolutely infuriating, filled with self-inflicted problems.
It has definitely gone through ebbs and flows. Predictably around legislation about this topic. I 100% believe this is a problem that can be solved (greatly impacted) through legislation given this strong correlation. But I don't think it is because the DNC list is a list to call but rather that I've had this number for a few decades and it definitely made it onto some list years ago. This is 100% happening. As well as a lot of other illegal stuff. I worked at a call center for two months between my undergrad and getting hired and my coked up bosses 100% asked us to do illegal things. I disobeyed. Anytime someone asked me to take them off the list I complied. Got written up, didn't give a fuck. They were definitely selling those lists to spammers who were happy to have confirmation that the numbers were legitimate.They figured out the flaw to SHAKEN/STIR. It was mandated for VOIP calls.
So instead these scam call centers switched to the legacy SS7, that's how you are getting all these fraudulent calls. SS7 is not IP based and incompatible with SHAKEN/STIR
And it'll be 400 years from now before any US telecom thinks about discontinuing SS7.
I wish I could tell my phone to return a busy signal for unknown numbers lacking whatever it is that SHAKEN/STIR provides.
> All of which have my same area code, which is for a location I haven't live at for over 15 years
I am in a similar situation. One of my not-yet-implemented projects is to route my phone through a VOIP app that automatically blocks any number from my phone's area code (or even the whole state) where the caller is not in my contact list.
A few times it has been bad enough I've thought about picking up learning how to make phone apps so that I can one click report the numbers to the FCC. I'm not sure it'll do something but making an explicit "fuck you, do something about this" statement tends to help. Squeaky wheel and all that... (Why is this not a feature in the base phone app?)
I have an app on Android called SpamBlocker. I added a regex rule to deny any call from my area code - like you, I haven't lived there for a long time. I'd 100% recommend this approach.
Funny, Today I received TEN spam calls. Each had about half an hour in between, from various numbers and area codes. I have never received that many spam calls ever.
I have received that many on average every day for the last 2-3 years. Nothing I can do about it, my number is public for business calls. It's absolutely rage inducing.
"do not call" means "call me from India on a burner number". Seriously, I've been fighting scammers for years now and their MO is some sort of SEO service where a local business pays to get more "marketing" and (probably unbeknownst to them) their money is used to fund an outbound call center in India that robodials all day long, careful to not call during the night. The calls solicit Medicare upgrades, burial insurance, or home improvement. I don't think these are the malignant "clean your bank account" scammers, they end up promoting legitimate business with the catch that "by accepting this offer you agree to be called (by the local rep) even if you are on the DNC list". So their original robodial is illegal but it's from India so good luck with that, but they record your consent if you pretend to be interested in the product, so you cannot sue the people who contracted them. It's just a classic skirt the law ploy.
Good start. Next, put the people running these scam phone providers in jail.
Yes! Easy to forget that just because "we" don't fall for them, they're still incredibly harmful to our seniors and other vulnerable populations.
Also hate the scam "work from home for $125,000 per year" texts. They really prey on the desperate.
Exactly. My city started posting about online safety and warnings about various scams. Unfortunately, almost every one of them also mentions how a local resident was victimized. We have a fairly large senior population.
It's easy to say it's idiots who fall for this stuff when we're young enough to have grown up in this world or started using new technology at an early age. We will be the ones targeted someday and it will be a medium that didn't become available to us until later in life just like what the seniors are experiencing now.
> It's easy to say it's idiots who fall for this stuff
It’s not just “easy”, it’s an ideological imperative to ensure that the vulnerable have “personal responsibility” to avoid predation, while predators bear no responsibility for their own actions. Many tech business models depend on exploitation — it’s not just phone scammers.
It's always convenient to decide that the weak deserve to be exploited because they were too lazy or stupid to be strong. Then we can do the thing that makes the least sense, which is to design society to protect the strong.
Or rather, to justify what the strong were already doing and didn't have to ask anybody's permission to do, and that nobody else ever had a say about that mattered.
Yes, although it's worth mentioning that there are scams that target our demographic, they just look different (fake investment, job, real-estate, or romance opportunities).
Apple makes it extremely easy to fall prey to email scams. They absolutely refuse to show an email address in less than 3 taps. There’s no setting in Mail to always show the address and they trust all senders to give an honest name. So if a contact loses their contact list scammers can send a known name with a junk address and you won’t see it unless you go out of your way.
Apple makes a lot of dumb user-hostile decisions but this one is particularly egregious and has caught me off guard.
The "r/scams" sub-reddit is an amazing glimpse into this world. The saddest ones to me are the peoples' parents who fully believe they're talking to a celebrity who needs their money for some outlandish reason (and they send it to them over and over).
I know a gal whose grandmother sent ~400k to scammers, which is the kind of victim they are looking for - someone in cognitive decline who is malleable. The neighbors apparently also were preying on her, and ended up with her cars and a bunch of other stuff.
Absolute scum of the earth.
Good start. Next, put the people running these scam phone providers in jail.
I agree. In fact, 1200 SS7 circuits is nothing. If these people are not locked up they will just get another circuit using another fake identity. It's like blocking 1200 ASN's and saying one made a dent in spam.
I'm going to go ahead and say none of them are in the jurisdiction of the DoJ.
No one outside the jurisdiction of my country's laws should be able to make my phone ring or send me text messages without my permission.
At least without it showing up as an international number.
No, labeling is not enough, options are not enough, unattested communication needs to go silently to spam by default. Anything else encourages the spam. "We let spammers ring your phone unless you tick an option 5 menus deep in your phone that gets automatically reset every 3 months at update time and moved every 2 years between names/locations that range from awful to insane" doesn't cut it.
The beautiful thing about default-deny for internationally-sourced calls is it fixes the spam problem for everyone, including those who opt-in. If 90% of the spammers' calls are just immediately dropped, they're no longer going to get enough hits to be worth the effort, so it also protects those who actually do have a legit reason to receive international calls.
Yes, but we don't even have to go that far: international != unattested. Legitimate overseas telecoms should be able to sign their communications. The point isn't to seal off the USA, the point is to have someone to ban if they start abusing access.
Most international telecom operations aren't facilitating scam call centers, and of the ones who are I suspect very few are so eager to turn a blind eye that they will continue to do so when staring down the barrel of actual consequences.
You got my vote
All the companies have a direct connection to the phone network in the US. The FCC is cutting them off from the US phone network because they have failed to adopt robocall mitigation measures.
If a country dares have IP laws less restrictive than the US would like, the US finds plenty of levers to pull. But in this case, the matter is something that is illegal in the scammer's country also (clear fraud tends to be illegal everywhere), so there's probably more that US police could do than literally nothing.
Being outside of US legal jurisdiction is exactly why they ought to be thrown into a wood chipper.
I don't understand why this doesn't happen EVERY DAY until the problem is resolved.
And before someone cite US code: it's virtually impossible for foreigners to seek justice in this context. Not only do these criminals lack the money, education, and access to legal representation to do so, but the DoJ has better things to do than spend their time looking into the veracity of an international claim of this kind.
Do these scam phone providers have their Google My Business listing verified yet?
You should call them a few hundred thousand times just to be sure.
PTSD on HN. It hurts.
Is that what European countries do? Is that why there are no robocalls there?
How many are based in the US and subject to US-based prosecution?
Why can someone from outside the US make my phone ring? Why can't I opt out of calls sourced internationally? Seems like an easy way to fix the problem. There is no reason for anyone overseas to call me, and if someone US-based does phone spamming, we can prosecute them.
Why can someone from outside the US make my phone ring?
There are applications to block international calls but that only helps if the number is not spoofed. People that have SS7 lines into the telco system can spoof as just about any number. I wanted to kill those circuits but my employer at the time said, "they are paying their bills, arent they?". This was in the 90's. I guess the laws are every so slowly starting to catch up.
Also, VoIP goes over the Internet and the Internet is international.
Country codes stopped being indicative of location the moment we removed the wires from our telephones.
> I wanted to kill those circuits but my employer at the time said, "they are paying their bills, arent they?".
This is loud to me, mostly because the last time I got non-TCPA compliant texts trying to solicit business, the VOIP provider refused to give the company's actual name or contact info.
This is telco doing as well.
It should be illegal for Telco to allow SS7 spoofing for numbers that customer does not show they own.
Initial SIP setup shows number not to be a number they own, drop the SIP dial and be done with it.
Also, all US based phone numbers should have US based person tied to it. If they misbehave, drop them and blacklist them.
All this is solvable if we don't let phone providers get away with "Welp, the checks cleared, this is not our problem."
SS7 should be nuked from orbit, at some point we have to stop pretending we can't replace that pos.
SS7 should be nuked from orbit
I completely agree.
You're right, it is an easy technical fix.
Mainland China lets people opt out of phone calls that come from outside of the Mainland...it's a feature one can turn off on an on their mobile plan.
Calls from outside the Mainland always cause a warning to pop up on the receiving user's phone that says something like "this call is coming from outside of the mainland, be careful of being scammed".
I can imagine there are many reasons the US doesn't fix this..one of which probably that much of US customer service is outsourced to people outside the US!
>I can imagine there are many reasons the US doesn't fix this..one of which probably that much of US customer service is outsourced to people outside the US!
This. Gotta have your round robin of foreign call centers be able to spoof the main customer service line numbers for whoever they're contracted to represent.
Personally I think that should all be done in software these days, not something supported at the teleco level but what do I know.
This isn't even an unreasonable feature to implement. We just need something like SSL certs: Has Legitimate Business holding phone number XYZ granted other entity the right to use their identity?
Exactly. There are plenty of legitimate reasons to spoof numbers, but all of them are people acting on behalf of the owner of the number being spoofed. Enforce that.
I wish only people bearing a token that I've previously signed could call me.
This would be awesome. Next step would be filtering out non-US IPs from any online content (including forum comments, videos, tweets, etc)
An easy way to "fix" the problem for closet dwelling US nerds like us who've decided we don't want to use the telephone anymore. Everyone else in the world isn't like us, and have to actually use their phones to talk to real people everywhere. Pretty much everyone has family abroad, etc... This just isn't a serious suggestion.
Which is why this is likely to end up getting rolled back. Surely most of these providers are dominated by spam. But equally surely all of them carry some legitimate traffic (or else this particular trigger would have been pulled already).
There will be friendly fire from this policy decision, almost certainly.
>Pretty much everyone has family abroad, etc
Yeah, and they use Whatsapp, Telegram, or Facetime, or Messenger to connect.
I'd love a solution that would fix the problem for everyone, sure, but since the evidence is that is apparently impossible, I'll happily take one that only helps a subset.
> Pretty much everyone has family abroad
In the US? Most normie people I know barely even know anyone that's visited overseas anywhere other than Canada and Mexico, much less stay connected to family living abroad. Tons of people don't even regularly talk to people outside of state they live in.
Don't get me wrong it's not entirely uncommon and can be common in immigrant communities but outside of that unless you've got wealthy globe-trotting family you probably don't have anyone to talk to overseas. Its something far from "pretty much everyone".
> Why can someone from outside the US make my phone ring? Why can't I opt out of calls sourced internationally?
Because spam call centers pay much more to access phone networks than you do, therefore telcos care about them, and not you. Plus you NEED a phone and they know that.
Even when the scammers are out of the US, at some point in the chain a US based telephone company is accepting inbound connections that don't provide the validation required.
The scale of fraud is such that this should factor into trade talks.
Also, pragmatically, basically everywhere outside of China and Russia is subject to US "prosecution".
More than you'd think, from what I've seen.
Probably none, but you would think fraud would be illegal everywhere.
That's no longer a barrier to the use of force by the US
Literally has not been a barrier to the US using force to protect commercial interests since "the shores of Tripoli" in 1801.
Or at the very least send them a DVD of The Beekeeper.
Or start assassinating them. They prey on the most vulnerable Americans. Why not declare war on them and start decapitating their organizations?
I pray and yearn for the day that they legalize and allow drone striking ransomware operators.
Gotta round up the people who lost their green cards first.
I'll definitely believe it when I don't see those calls, but I could not be more in favor of turning the phone network into a much more "trusted" type of system -- similar to how SSL certs used to be prior to the Let's Encrypt era, where it requires some form of validation of something besides 'existence':
Conceptually, someone US-based should have to cryptographically sign, with their license to continue participating at stake, an assertion that the source phone number is real. People should be free to configure their devices or phone accounts (A) what countries to accept calls from and (B) whether to accept unverified calls whose numbers are presumably spoofed.
Note: i'm aware that SHAKEN/STIR or whatever exists and shares some of that idea, I'm just looking forward to full adoption of something so that I can make those choices described above.
Combine this next with ability to report numbers who spam (with the Apple/Google duopoly it should be trivially easy to put a "report spam" button in the call UI) and sanction providers (first financially and eventually with revocation of their credential to sign calls).
Maybe 30 years ago it would have been seen as too draconian to prevent someone from being able to call others anonymously but the Internet exists and provides ample avenues for those cliche use cases like "whistleblower needs to talk to journalists" so I'm 100% happy to have 'burdensome regulation' here if it stops scammers from ruining the phone as a usable channel for urgent information like "Your car is ready to pick up from the shop" or "Hi, you're the emergency contact for ____ and they are headed to the hospital."
> Conceptually, someone US-based should have to cryptographically sign, with their license to continue participating at stake, an assertion that the source phone number is real.
But phone numbers aren't real. They aren't any more real than an IP address. It's arbitrary. This is how VOIP systems work. You just assign a number from your block.
I totally get this, however they are assigned -- meaning someone is responsible for them. If you own the range 212-555-0000 through 9999 and you sign calls for spammers as coming from that range, those numbers should be revoked from your control, or you should be denied the ability to sign those outbound calls/texts so that your calls appear as likely fake.
Ideally anyone who owns numbers would stop letting literally anybody do anything with their numbers (the way they do today) because they don't want to lose the numbers or to get banned from operating a PSTN-connected system.
The outcome I'm going for is that if you're a spammer you can't find any US phone number owners who will let you use their numbers so you can only send "unsigned" calls that are obviously spam, or sign calls as originating from irresponsible countries, which are easily filtered out by those of us who don't have any friends in the Phillipines or whatever (I get a lot of "DMV" threat texts from +63)
Lots of folks hit the nail on the head, it's a structural problem with a telco network that was never designed to be open. I wrote about it back in 2019 in case folks are interested [0]
[0] https://www.twilio.com/en-us/blog/insights/compliance/your-p...
Here's to many more. Some may be downcast because they feel like its a drop in the ocean, but many drops an ocean do make. Hopefully its the start of actually enforcing some of our laws on the internet.
Meanwhile, here in Australia ...
It used to be as bad as others describe here, if not worse. A few years ago my 92 yo mother disconnected her land line because she was getting 20 calls a day. The spammers had figured out the number range of her retirement village, and hammered it mercilessly.
But other day I was reflecting on how oddly silent it has become on the phone spam front. This article made me wonder - just how long had it been since I received a spam call or SMS. So I looked at the phones block list. It seems the answer is 4 months of spammless bliss on my phone.
The ACMA (Australian Communications and Media Authority - the government body that polices this sort of thing) have been hammering on about this for years, apparently without success. I had given up on them. Yet now in 2025, they had a total victory, they've annihilated all phone spam, and I didn't notice for months. No media release, no trumpeting from the roof tops. They just quietly and effectively did their job.
I salute you sirs and madams. Good work. Not just good - excellent work. In fact brilliant. Your efforts make me proud to be an Australian.
> Yet now in 2025, they had a total victory, they've annihilated all phone spam, and I didn't notice for months. No media release, no trumpeting from the roof tops. They just quietly and effectively did their job.
How?
https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DA-25-737A1.txt
doc with list of the removed company names.
There are a LOT of ISPs on this list. I wonder what's going to happen to all the legitimate VOIP users? No more cable phone lines, effectively?
Looks like a lot of small ISPs have been procrastinating about getting their robocalling mitigation/compliance policies implemented, and didn't think the FCC was serious about the “Final Warning”. They'll get their stuff fixed eventualy.
For anybody on an android phone,I highly recommend https://github.com/aj3423/SpamBlocker
It is highly configurable with every feature I've ever wanted but could never find for call filtering in the the app store. I've essentially set mine so that if the calling number is not in my contacts, or is not a number I've called in the last 90 days, the phone never runs and the call is sent to voice mail. But it supports lots of other mechanisms to filter with like regex, or how many times the number has called within a given timeframe.
Something changed about 1 year ago where the spam calls I get are 10x higher than in the past. It got so bad I had to change how I use my phone. Any caller not in my contact list goes immediately to voicemail.
I’ve tried several robocall blockers, but they tend to cause connectivity issues.
If anyone else has this problem, what are you using to prevent robocalls?
I just stopped answering any/all unknown phone numbers. Only my contacts get me without leaving a message. I'm sure it's caused me to lose business, but I can't find a better way of maintaining my own productivity/sanity. I do disclose this practice in the outgoing message, and encourage callers to text me if they don't get an answer. Whatever software the robocallers use doesn't seem to be smart enough to clock this as an alternative channel, but I'm sure some AI product will make this worse.
Yup, we went to this not too long ago. Many calls a day, mostly medicare scammers.
Pixel phones are excellent at blocking spam calls. In fact I will not let my mother use any other phone despite her desperately wanting an iPhone.
My SO has an iPhone and she gets at least 3-4 spam calls a day. I get probably 1 a week that gets through the filter, which you can screen with a bot anyway.
Same. I have a Pixel on Google Fi and get like one spam call every 2 weeks. And it always shows "possible spam" in big red letters.
My girlfriend on the other hand gets several a day with a Samsung on A&TT. And it's worse for her because she is a real estate agent and can't afford not to take calls.
Pixel phones. Night and day difference from my wife’s iPhone. Same carrier. It’s simply not an issue.
I have an iPhone and I basically never get spam calls.
Interesting. To be clear I get spam calls but they are rejected or screened automatically. If I look through my call history I can see some them.
There are most certainly other factors at play.
My wife recently switched from a Samsung to a new iPhone which prompted my observation (not a pixel phone of course but still it got worse for her). All anecdata.
Same thing happened to me several years ago.
I just send anyone not in my contacts to voicemail (using the iOS setting) and delete all the robocall voicemails about once per month.
I’ve given up and just don’t answer calls from anyone that isn’t in my contacts list.
If it’s important they’ll text me or leave a voicemail with a callback number.
Robocalls are a huge pain but just as annoying is non-stop spam text messages. No idea why Apple doesn't allow for keyword filtering. Spam and robocalls are mostly nonexistent problems on Android.
i've used Bouncer for years on ios with success to filter non-stop political fundraising texts.
It's not perfect/ideal, but you can basically accomplish keyword filtering using a shortcut powered by a message automation. I've done something similar where during the political season I would have all incoming texts (from unknown numbers) run through an LLM to determine if it was a political message. If so, it'd get deleted immediately.
The only Google service that I still regularly use is Google Voice. They've partnered with NoMoRobo and their call screening really works. I get 2-3 spam calls and a few spam SMS texts per day, and they are all filtered so I don't see them unless I look in the Spam folder.
It’s important to make it clear to Americans that this problem is mostly solved in other countries. It should be possible to end this tomorrow in the US.
Spam calls in the UK for example, are rare. All of the spam calls I get are from my US desk number.
More details: https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DA-25-694A1.txt
For KYC-like needs, foreign companies or bad actors are registering their LLC in Wyoming which satisfies the requirements, according to a friend of mine who’s in the business…
Maybe I'm just old, but I remember the tv advertisements for the dubious 900 numbers (remember Miss Cleo?) that you could call, but you had to pay for the time.
Is there any law that says that I can't just get one of those for use as my personal number and then give that # out as my contact info?
The phone carriers stopped supporting them: https://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/25/business/t-s-decision-wit...
Before I got my phone number, a woman by the name of "Sade" has the number. Recently I've been getting at least one call per day from the same company regarding an extended auto warranty.
I've told them politely that this is the wrong number, they keep calling. I've asked them to take my number off their list and they happily agree to, but they keep calling. I've threatened to contact the FCC is they keep calling yet....they keep calling. I've tried to block their number multiple times, but they just keep fucking calling from different numbers.
I honestly don't get the logic of these places. "Hey this guy has told us 20 times in all manner of ways to stop calling him....but I think he might buy an extended warranty on the 21st call!!"
Can someone explain to me what the logic of these places is? It just seems like an absolute brain-dead strategy.
I never answer any calls from non-contacts because I assume answering automatically flags the number as "a live one" meaning "potential target who picks up their phone" in any number of nefarious databases. If an outside/unknown number needs me they can leave a message and I'll call them back if the message reveals them to be legit.
I used to get ~6-10 spam calls per day and I would do what you describe: ignore the call. Then I started picking up, immediately muting myself, and waiting. The auto-dialer gives up after exactly 10 seconds of silence and hangs up. This has reduced my spam calls to 1-3 per WEEK.
The downside is sometimes real people call (like a contractor your landlord hired), hear silence, and don't say anything themselves because they're waiting for a "hello?". Whereas ignoring the call would let them actually leave a voicemail which would be useful. As I learned recently: sometimes real people don't call back a 2nd time.
I think there's a database of "known trolls" because I've stopped getting calls after I started consistently wasting their time.
This will take a few times but... That is when you interact with them, maliciously. Basically cost them time and money. Have them on there for an hour or more. Set phone down come back every 2-3 mins and make sure they are still there. Make sure you have them repeat everything, your connection is not so good. Drag it for at least 20-60 mins. Then at the last second back out on the sale and mention you wanted on their do not call list at the end. As well as a copy of their DNC policy priority mailed. "you know what I am going to ask you put me on your do not call list and I want a copy of your do not call policy just like the last 3 times".
You break that support persons numbers and they may add you. At worst they will call again and you cost them more money.
I've always thought that it's because you picked up in the first place. This number is now marked as one that has a human who picks up the phone.
Lack of write access to the db, your call will be forwarded to the next available operator.
Hoping someone else answers that's scammable.
They're just trying to get in on that diamond life.
What happened here is that the dealership sold that girl's data to many companies. You can tell one of the companies to stop calling, and they will happily remove you from their database, but there are many of them with your phone number.
I've lost track of how many times I've seen people say something like, "I gave them something so they would go away, but they keep calling me." So yes, bothering people until you get some money from them is probably viable. Keep in mind that it doesn't have to work on everyone. If it works on 1% of their victims it's probably still profitable.
Sade as in de Sade.
Is this why I haven't received any spam calls today after years of getting dozens daily? Hallelujah if so!
I've been getting 2-3 calls a DAY from people pretending to be Google trying to get in my account. Hopefully this action reduces this
EVE Online has had a functional anti-spam system for many years: it costs you some money to contact someone who doesn't have you in their contacts.
The amount is configurable and the feature can be turned off.
You as the receiver keep 70% of the fee.
Think of how quickly spam would go away.
Between the 0 real security and the generational jump in capability fraud now has because of AI, there is no excuse for the continued existence of traditional voice or SMS. We'll never be able to solve compromised devices or social engineering of others, but the idea that anyone/any software in the world can push a message to a device and then immediately communicate with that person is absurd.
At the risk of going too cliché on AI speculation, imagine a hostile AI (or just a non-aligned one under the control of a big nation-state adversary) with nothing but ability to send spoofed texts and calls, and a mission to harm US interests.
It could easily set up thousands of people as unknowing patsies to commit mass terrorist acts, just by giving the AI a small amount of crypto to use in "paying people for gig work" to do tasks. It could start people off with busywork like ferrying harmless packages back and forth, and the ones who proved reliable, eventually would get a much less harmless package to be delivered somewhere sensitive.
That could all be orchestrated by human terrorists of course, but it's so much more effective if they could do it in 100 cities at once without almost any (knowing) human labor, and without any detectable foreign involvement.
Or just make callers cover all the costs, like in some countries. Still, I really wish there were an option to charge incoming callers as you suggested—because honestly, about 90% of calls I get outside my circle are unsolicited. That way, only the 10% that truly matter would reach me. Right now, I’m on a strict “no-ring” policy: if a call turns out to be legitimate, I’ll call back. But nobody gets real-time PSTN access to me anymore—it’s simply not sustainable.
> Or just make callers cover all the costs,
Wait, who covers the cost in the US?
In the US, the receiver effectively covers the cost of mobile calls—though it’s a bit nuanced, so apologies for any lack of clarity. You’re essentially paying for incoming calls if you’re on a metered plan, since those minutes get deducted. With most rate plans now being unlimited, this cost is somewhat hidden.
In Japan (the only other system I’m familiar with), it works differently: the caller is charged for the recipient’s end, while the receiver pays nothing. For example, calling a mobile phone from a landline costs more to account for the mobile portion. I remember years ago using a prepaid phone card from a payphone to call a mobile number—the balance drained incredibly fast. This is one reason why younger generations in Japan rarely rely on PSTN for routine calls, since it can quickly become expensive.
Dang, I never even heard about that. A few years back I read that US people had to pay for incoming SMS. That was already crazy.
Yes, it used to be around 15 cents or so to send or receive an SMS (depending on the rate plan). But, as with calls, unlimited messaging has become the norm these days.
“ The FCC is doing everything in its power to fight back against these malicious and illegal calls.”
Umm, no it isn’t. This is 2025. The technology to fix this is not complicated, but the people who can implement it simply don’t want to.
If Verizon/ATT/T Mo got fined $25 every time a robo call went through they’d find a way to stop it really fast. Create KYC verification systems and use metadata to route non-verified calls to a spam voicemail folder, problem solved.
I have received a scam text message every day for the last few months. I haven’t received one yet today. Next time someone says something snide about the government remind them of this enforcement.
Why doesn't the FCC put together a new communications solution to replace phone calls? We already have capable devices and robust infrastructure. What's stopping them from dropping a new protocol on top of that?
The costs of maintaining this legacy solution only seem to be getting higher by the day.
Just kill the phone. It's a terrible anachronism. If you insist on voice you can attach an ogg/mp3 file to your email.
How I imagine you ~~calling~~ emailing the fire department: https://youtu.be/uesx85EHRTo (The IT crowd - Moss Contacts Fire Department)
Sure, put the emergency hotline on the internet. It already is very special and doesn't use the phone network the way other voice calls do.
Maybe shutting down the entire phone system would be too disruptive, but perhaps we could start by rethinking incoming calls for individuals—or at least shift the social norm around them. In a sense, that trend has already begun, since most people won’t pick up if the number is unfamiliar. And in circles where multi-modal communication is the default, how often do you actually get a legitimate call over PSTN anymore?
Legitimacy aside, the only people who still call me without prior arrangement tend to be those who assume they’re entitled to my time and attention on demand. The phone has always been a disruptive form of communication—even if every single call were legitimate (which is far from reality)—because it disregards the boundaries of the recipient’s time.
That’s why I stopped giving anyone real-time PSTN access. For me, it’s voicemail-only now, and honestly, it’s the best decision I’ve made for cutting down on annoyances.
I'm not one of the people down-voting this, I'm inclined to sort of agree with you. Where you lost me was attaching files to an email. Are you really suggesting this solution has fewer problems than telephones?
Well, isn’t that essentially what voicemail is? We already have a mechanism to send voices as files—it’s just that not all voicemail systems deliver them in that format.
It wouldn’t solve everything, but considering how many scammers rely on real-time urgency in their calls, shifting phone communication toward asynchronous messages could actually help. It would undercut that pressure tactic, and it would also make record-keeping much easier.
I'm here for the explanation as to how attached voice clips are equivalent to real time two-way voice communication