back to article Robocalling Americans? That'll cost you $1.7m

A pair of US companies have been fined $1.7m by the FTC for violating federal laws on robocalling. The US trade watchdog said that Universal Processing Services of Wisconsin and HES Merchant Services Company would have to split a $1,734,972 bill for their role in a robocall scheme advertising credit card interest rate …

  1. Six_Degrees

    "The trade watchdog has courted hackers to track down companies making automated calls and at one point put a $50,000 bounty on offer for researchers who could develop a method for blocking robocalls."

    Can't phone companies simply take note that one of their customers is making tens or hundreds of thousands of calls per day that last an average of seconds? How hard a problem is this, really?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Unless it's a distributed arrangement. You are hired by robocall company, they pay for a phone line to your house, you plug their device in to that phone line, then phones "home" via the Internet to get instructions. Perhaps the account is created in your name too.

      Central office then instruct the army of robo-callers to call in a round-robin fashion so that the calls are coming from different places, at some randomised interval to foil automatic detection by the telcos.

    2. John H Woods Silver badge

      Method already invented ...

      it's called the audio captcha, e.g.

      "Hello, please answer the following questions by speaking the answer or pressing the keys on your telephones. What is 2 plus 5?"

      "7"

      "What is 3 times 2?"

      "6"

      "Putting you through now ... *ring* *ring*"

    3. Kevin McMurtrie Silver badge

      There's the problem - this is revenue for phone companies, scammers, and the FTC. They perpetuate a system where these calls are completely untraceable. That $50000 from the FTC was a feel-good prize wasted on Nomorobo rather than real solutions., like a two-way call handshake to validate Caller-ID. My telco/ISP added Nomorobo and I didn't even notice because scammers were already spoofing random local numbers.

    4. Voland's right hand Silver badge

      Theoretically - yes

      Robocallers do not use "joe average luser phone line". In the olden days it was an ISDN trunk, now it is usually a SIP trunk. If they are keeping it loaded (as robocallers do) it is trivial to pick it up as a robocall activity. The pattern of call setup + call frequency + call duration is quite easy to distinguish. Trivial Bayes on the call log should be able to pick it out with 99% certainty.

      The problem is that the telcos are not willing to do anything about it. It is like assigning the cat to guard the canary. They get termination fees and they also sell their customer data to the marketeers which feed it to the robocaller outfits.

      In any case, to put it bluntly, these guys were stupid. It has been the norm to set up robocaller operations outside the country jurisdiction and use VOIP for a very long time now.

      1. Ole Juul

        Re: Theoretically - yes

        Kudos to @ Voland's right hand for mentioning contemporary phone tech.

        PS: For those who want to stop getting phone spam, use some kind of telemarketer stop such as a voice prompt asking to push a (random) number to connect. I haven't had any phone spam since I did that. If your phone company doesn't offer those kinds of services for free, change company.

      2. Alan Brown Silver badge

        Re: Theoretically - yes

        "The problem is that the telcos are not willing to do anything about it. It is like assigning the cat to guard the canary. They get termination fees and they also sell their customer data to the marketeers which feed it to the robocaller outfits."

        The FTC/FCC charge up to $11,500 per call made illegally. $1.7m is on the rather small side.

        I totally agree on the telco front. Making them jointly liable would shut the practice down overnight - and it's worth noting that if someone can find a pink contract showing that anyone within the organisations is knowingly selling to a criminal operation, that is exactly what will happen.

  2. Khaptain Silver badge
    Megaphone

    Get the ball rolling

    I can't think of any companies that deserve more than these bastards to get hung out to dry for their consistant "harcellement" of the general public.

    It's time that all this nonsense stops. Automatic or manual outgoing telephone marketing/racketeering campaigns should simply be forbidden unless the client has specifically given their authorisation to be called.

    The telcos know by the numbers who is doing this shit, so it's not like we don't know about them. When someone makes a couple of thousand outgoing calls every morning/afternoon it is not difficult for a telco to keep track of them.....

    [ Specifically meaning haven taken the time to handwrite a letter to the marketing agency].

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Get the ball rolling

      Telcos are often very friendly with services making lots of calls (they still need to pay for them...), it's money for them, after all. Most telephone scams usually means money one way or the other for telcos as well. Do not expect them do anything to help stop those scams, they will probably help to cover them.

  3. Phredd

    That's a 'giveaway' fine. They'll be back in business in a month under a new name. The calls will continue.

    1. Mark 85

      Well, I'm not sure it worked.... this week alone I've had 5 from either these guys or someone using the same recorded messages. And a couple of "you've won a cruise to the Bahamas". OTOH, I've not received any Microsoft Technical Support offering to fix my computer viruses either. So either the same bastards are still calling (same recorded message as always) or it's a new group of bastards.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    white the ICO

    do shit about people being pested by automatic calls from the same scum, promoting the same scams, and calling from the same numbers, for months.

  5. Peter Prof Fox

    Easy

    (1) All telcos know who is PAYING for the call

    (2) Have a '1-9-7-1' (like 1-4-7-1) that registers a harassment The more that object the bigger the fine or up-front cost.

    (3) Profit

    If we-the-consumer can object easily then we will.

    Oh dear the powers-that-be are bankrolled by these 'wealth creators' so don't hold your breath

  6. Crazy Operations Guy

    Moving to malware

    I've been getting scam calls from malware-infected phones lately. The call appears to come from a friend or coworker, and then when I go to look at their phone, lo and behold, right on the file system is an app (random string of characters) that doesn't show up in the phone's UI that has managed to get permissions to make phone calls and access the address book with a pike of audio files hanging out in the directory.

  7. Wade Burchette

    Many robocallers use cheap VoIP numbers or even spoofed numbers. One time, my caller-id showed my number.

    If I was to introduce a way to block robocallers, what I would do is first allow customers to block any call that originates outside of the country. Or whitelist certain countries, blacklist the rest. Before a VoIP call is completed, the origin must be traced by the IP address. If it cannot be traced, the number is blocked. This will stop the robocallers who use cheap VoIP services and who are outside the jurisdiction of the government. (My proposal shouldn't be limited to the United States but for every country.) I would also require the phone companies to implement a code that customers can dial to report illegal robocallers and that would make the phone company generate a trace log. The report will be grouped by the trace log, not by the phone number so that a single robocaller cannot change numbers every week to avoid suspicion. The trace log would include enough information for investigators to find the scum of this earth. Once a sufficient number of distinct customers complain about a robocaller, an automatic investigation is triggered. Next, since it is illegal in the US to have a recorded telemarketing message, I would run public service announcements explaining want to do when you receive a robocaller.

    A complex system that will never be implemented, but it would stop these douches. I received 12 robocallers last week.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      I think it's easier than that

      *Every* phone call has an origin, one that emergency services can always access. I can respect the fact that some companies do number changing or hiding, but as there is an actual origin available there should be a method by which you can flag a certain call (or time/date) as malicious.

      If enough reports come in about the same call origin there is cause for investigation by the telco or authorities.

      After all, they already have your call records (in the US I think that is even warrant-free as if somehow meta-data is not private), it would be a good idea if they were used for something positive for a change.

      Given that it actually *is* that simple, I think the suspicion is justified that telco's don't really *want* to solve the problem, also because they never get pulled into these cases. As someone else already observed, it's not hard to detect robocall activity by the sheer line load it creates so make them culpable. That will at least hit them where it hurts: in their profits.

      1. Doctor Syntax Silver badge

        Re: I think it's easier than that

        " but as there is an actual origin available there should be a method by which you can flag a certain call (or time/date) as malicious."

        I'll go one better than that. The flagged caller is charged a fee for the callee's time and trouble credited to the callee's telco account. Callee's telco charges the caller if they're on the same network - plus an additional fee for the time & trouble in operating the system*. If the caller is on a different network they charge that network instead. If several networks are involved the charges just keep getting passed up, accumulating additional telco fees each time. If a telco doesn't keep track of where the calls are coming from they are in the barrel for the entire set of fees, an arrangement which should concentrate their minds to do better in future. It would, of course, need some precautions to stop subscribers from gaming the system by flagging every call.

        It by-passes the current (at least in the UK) tests for the severity of the distress caused as it simply becomes a commercial transaction - you call me & pay me a fee for taking the call.

        *In particular the up-front costs to add the functionality in the first place.

  8. David 132 Silver badge
    Devil

    And they immediately take no notice.

    Coincidentally, I just received one of these calls, about 5 minutes before seeing this article.

    A spoofed number that began with my area code but had way too many digits - 503515386523 - I foolishly answered it anyway (my wife can never remember her number, so hands mine out to everyone as her point of contact, so I get random calls asking when I'm going to take delivery of even random-er furnishings & suchlike, but I digress).

    Anyway. Perhaps in response to this verdict, "Rachel" has changed her name and modified her pitch. She's now "Melinda from Credit Card services", and she assured me that my current account is OK but I need to call them urgently. No. Fsck off. Hung up at that point.

    So maybe it'll take more than a $1.7 meeeellion judgement to squish these scumbags. Personally I'd feed 'em into an industrial meat grinder feet first, but then I've always been soft on social justice matters.

    1. frank ly
      Happy

      Re: And they immediately take no notice.

      It sounds like you need to take out an injunction against your wife.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: And they immediately take no notice.

      So maybe it'll take more than a $1.7 meeeellion judgement to squish these scumbags. Personally I'd feed 'em into an industrial meat grinder feet first, but then I've always been soft on social justice matters.

      Far too quick IMHO :). I agree with you, though, that these fines should be made personal. As long as it's "the company" who receives the fine it just becomes a tax deductible cost of doing business, or these scumbags simply close shop and start a new one (in the UK I've even seen circular ownership to frustrate asset assessment, so company A owns company B, which owns company C .. which owns company A).

      Personally I would convict these people to mandatory reception of robo and telemarketing calls per hour, every day, for, say, a couple of years. If they fail to personally answer more than 75% of the calls, jail time applies (it's easy to check with voice printing and a voice captcha). Alternatively, make them answer calls from victims at that rate. I'd give it max a month before they will be begging to be put into jail instead, and I suspect there will be a much lower rate of recidivism..

      Heck, they may even beg for your industrial meat grinder instead..

    3. Michael Wojcik Silver badge

      Re: And they immediately take no notice.

      Hung up at that point.

      I always hit Mute, then 1 to be connected to an operator, then set the phone aside. Eventually they'll hang up, but not after wasting a bit of their time and money.

  9. Sanctimonious Prick
    Joke

    Reading Between The Lines...

    "The trade watchdog has courted hackers..."

    Coercion?

  10. Alan W. Rateliff, II

    Now if they can catch "Sharon"

    Sharon, the Google Local Specialist, calls me at least three times a week from various random numbers, including local numbers.

  11. David Kelly 2

    Took far too long

    Have been receiving "Card Services" robocalls for at least 5 years. For a while was getting 2 or 3 per day. And it only just starting bugging the FTC in 2012?

    $1.7M? Thats like $0.10 per call. They got off cheap.

    If the NSA wanted public support for logging all phone calls all they had to do was rat out the robocallers and let President Drone drone them.

  12. Herbert Meyer

    no executions ?

    Isn't violation of the Do Not Call list a capital offense ? Or is it only at dinnertime, by a non-political agent. Perhaps this is what Randy should filibuster about.

    1. Peter Simpson 1
      Happy

      Re: no executions ?

      Isn't violation of the Do Not Call list a capital offense ?

      It is if I ever get my hands on the buggers.

  13. asdf

    scale is everything

    And yet banks who through even more obvious fraud cost consumers orders of magnitude more face no injunctions against their business practices. Sounds fair.

  14. msknight

    Paging the NSA...

    Don't they record all the telephone conversations themselves? Can't they use an audio fingerprint of the first few seconds of any call? If a handfull of calls match then ... bingo!

    Oh, sorry, that would actually mean the NSA would have to admit that it listens to ... oh, never mind.

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Allow everyone the option to have a phone whitelist by law

    THAT's the real answer. Difficult? Sure. Unpopular with the world of commerce/advertising/scammers? Definitely. But until its drummed into everyones heads that companies exist to serve people, not the other way around, and that sociopathic behaviour will result in severe removal of privileges, AND those rules are properly enforced - there is likely to be little significant change.

    It's always struck me as crazy that our society very effectively praises and encourages sociopathic behaviour, some sectors even positively reward psychopathic behaviour, then everyone moans about how damned nasty the world is when according to the politicians and advertisers, it is suppsed to be such a lovely place for everyone.

    If a fraction of the cash spent on weaponary were spent instead on (a) how to come up with a system that stongly encourages effort that enhances society (yes, people DO need to be rewarded for their work, in a sensible manner. No rewards = no motivation) and strongly discourages sociopathic behavior and (b), the harder part, work out a way to get from teh system we've got to whatever system is thought would be better with as little bloodshed as possible

    - then just maybe we'd get somewhere better a tad sooner. I'm not holding my breath though.

    1. Alan Brown Silver badge

      Re: Allow everyone the option to have a phone whitelist by law

      Unfortunately the endgame for whitelist-only is already showing up a few posts up.

      Malware installed on mobiles calling people in the addressbook using audio files downloaded from a C&C server.

  16. AndrueC Silver badge
    Thumb Up

    The best solution I've found is sold in the UK as a TrueCall unit. I also believe that at least one phone from BT (the 6500?) has this functionality built in.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      "We don't recommend...

      trueCall for VoIP systems that make calls over the Internet."

  17. Nameless Faceless Computer User

    The FTC has been protecting robo callers. New York State passed a law to fine telemarketers on a per-call basis if a home phone was registered on a "do not call" list. On the day that law went into effect, the FTC came up with their own "do not call list" which superseded the New York law but relaxed the fines and enforcement. They've done nothing for years. I have personally filed thousands of complaints on-line and they did nothing.

    Worse, they gave the list of phone numbers away for FREE to non-profit organizations which are "supposed" to not call them, yet are exempt from any fines along with, of course, anyone calling for political calling and polling.

    At the height of abuse, my home phone registered as many as 35 phone calls per DAY. It never stopped ringing. I finally installed a telephone system with a secret extension give out only to people I know personally. Everyone else can leave a message. No more ringing unless I know you. Done.

  18. Oninoshiko
    Mushroom

    Can't we just shoot them?

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon

Other stories you might like