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.
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".
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.
> 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.
