How to stop pesky robocalls and texts to your cell phone
Fox Business,
by
Kathleen Joyce
Original Article
Posted By: MissMolly,
5/16/2019 5:32:00 AM
Are robocalls Opens a New Window. blowing up your smartphone? You´re not alone. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) says the agency’s top consumer complaints involve robocalls — and now, the agency is deciding how to proceed in the fight against unwanted callers. The FCC announced Wednesday it will vote in June whether to allow wireless carriers to block spam calls by default. The volume of calls rose to a record 5 billion in October, according to call-blocker YouMail Opens a New Window. . That´s "1,973 robocalls for every second of the month," the software company said.
Reply 1 - Posted by:
Strike3 5/16/2019 6:27:30 AM (No. 65838)
"Don´t pick up."
Wow, the government is so smart I don´t know what we would do without them.
1 person likes this.
Reply 2 - Posted by:
judy 5/16/2019 6:41:56 AM (No. 65828)
Congress is corrupted by lobbyists. We had do not call.gov, it worked, then?? The name of the country that produces or processes items was removed from labels. Oreo cookies are now made in Mexico, Smithfield meats send their meats to China to process..and the consumers are in the dark. I want someone to inform us how congress benefits from lobbyists. They should require a list of lobbyist & their influence to congress.
36 people like this.
Reply 3 - Posted by:
IowaDad 5/16/2019 7:08:28 AM (No. 65829)
It is totally staggering to me that a vast industry regulated by several huge agencies can permit robocalls to originate from a false and untraceable number. This could have been fixed years ago if anyone whom we pay fat salaries to regulate had cared about it.
31 people like this.
Reply 4 - Posted by:
JimJr 5/16/2019 10:14:18 AM (No. 65826)
On another site, a commenter had an interesting idea - charge the call initiator a small fee. The charge would be initiated when the call is answered (or text delivered) by the teleco of the recipient. The charge would then track back to the initiator´s teleco, which would be responsible for charging the initiator. As in other such payment systems already in place, each teleco in the chain would take the charge then pass the bill to the back down the chain. The teleco at the originating end then has to recover the payment from its customer. How this works to stop robocalls is that either the robo-caller has to pay what would be an astronomical amount (these places place millions of calls a day) or the teleco takes a bath, which would result in it cutting off the robo-caller or the upstream teleco´s stop accepting calls from the deadbeat teleco. Any way, problem solved.
8 people like this.
Reply 5 - Posted by:
philsner 5/16/2019 10:14:40 AM (No. 65835)
If you don´t already know these tactics, you have no business owning a cell phone.
10 people like this.
Reply 6 - Posted by:
Muguy 5/16/2019 11:00:24 AM (No. 65834)
How about a way end getting THE SAME call over and over?
Spoofing numbers in my state with someone from India...
2 people like this.
If I don´t know the number, I ignore it. If it´s someone/something important, they´ll leave a voicemail. If not, good riddance!!!
6 people like this.
Reply 8 - Posted by:
Nevadadad46 5/16/2019 11:27:33 AM (No. 65832)
So, the FCC is just now "Aware" of the robocall problem? They seem to be surprised by the staggering number of these wasteful, irritating and destructive calls. The callers steal billions of dollars from unsuspecting consumers every month! W
hy hasn´t Pakistan and India been pressured to hunt these scammers down? Why hasn´t the Federal government been able to initiate technical means to ruin their computers and seize their bank accounts? I watch videos of how private citizens with the tech savvy to do that and they are hilarious when some of them are able to shut down the entire operation of the scammers AND lock up their bank accounts, too by back feeding encrypted codes that absolutely destroy and infect the scammer´s operations with viruses and otherr tech destruction.
Why? I ask- let me answer that- Because our OWN politicians do not want that- they use these scammer tactics themselves for polling and robo-campaign calls and such other nonsense! Our own politicians are responsible, that is why!
0 people like this.
Reply 9 - Posted by:
kono 5/16/2019 12:23:45 PM (No. 65831)
A consumer can also register on the Federal Trade Commission’s “Do Not Call Registry." It is free to register.
DNC list has been a total no-op for at least 3 or 4 years. Junk callers openly ignore it, and complaints overwhelmed the resources allocated to follow up on those complaints.
2 people like this.
Reply 10 - Posted by:
dbdiva 5/16/2019 12:28:39 PM (No. 65824)
I let all calls go to voicemail. Most of calls I receive never leave a message; I return the calls that do leave one if necessary. Most of friends call or text me on my cell. If I receive a call from a number that is not on my contact list I don´t pick up.
2 people like this.
Reply 11 - Posted by:
DVC 5/16/2019 12:33:57 PM (No. 65827)
#2, is exactly right. That the system is so easily falsified so that these systems routinely create and use fraudulent phone numbers makes is entirely pointless to block a number which they called from.
I don´t know the details of how this would work, (I have a friend who was an engineer in Sprint, will ask) but it has to be something that could have a techno-fix.
The first order of business is to fix this system so that the number shown is always an accurate number of the line where the call originates. And put some teeth in that law. How about 10 years in prison for a single case of using a system to show a false phone number?
2 people like this.
Reply 12 - Posted by:
jorgecito 5/16/2019 12:34:42 PM (No. 65830)
We landline users need to be able to stop spam too.
My spouse and I rarely use cell phones –preferring our landline, because of concern over a probable link between cell phone use and cancer.
As landline customers, we might receive even more spam calls than cell users, because spammers assume you must be a gullible senior, if you´re so old-fashioned as to have a landline.
2 people like this.
Reply 13 - Posted by:
DVC 5/16/2019 3:06:17 PM (No. 65837)
#12, I will say that your fears are pretty unrealistic, but each person makes their own choices. A good friend was the VP of Technology for Sprint for 25+years, and we discussed this issue. He had his tech experts hunt down all the studies and review them, and he did this, too, a degreed electrical engineer, specialist in antenna design, which specializes in how radio signals propogate. He never could find anything that was enough ´real´ to cause any concern. This was a topic of dinner conversation more than a few times. He was personally interested because of a family genetic defect that made them more susceptible to cancers, so an intense personal interest.
The chargeback idea seems a sound one. If it were 2 cents per call, I would not care, yet it would quickly destroy the business model of these robocallers. Few ordinary people would exceed $1/month, and even $2/month is pretty minimal.
And it would have to be on ALL calls initiated, should even be called something like a ´call initiation fee´, since the great majority of robocalls are not answered, but we still want them to be penalized.
1 person likes this.
Reply 14 - Posted by:
JoElla Bee 5/16/2019 4:44:31 PM (No. 65825)
I´ve had many robocalls on my landline. I never answer.
Some use my area + prefix code. Even got one call from my own number! Not long after that a woman from a legitimate number in my area called and wanted to know why I was repeatedly calling her elderly mother. I had never called her.
I believe this could have been stopped long ago, but now is better late than never, if they actually do it.
1 person likes this.
Below, you will find ...
Most Recent Articles posted by "MissMolly"
and
Most Active Articles (last 48 hours)