Message-ID: <s5av1v$p9o$2@dont-email.me>
Date: 16 Apr 2021 03:07:43 -0000
From: "bob prohaska" <bp@www.zefox.net>
Subject: Can robocalls be tracked?
In the past year or so the flux of robocalls seems to have increased.
Lately I'm getting five to ten per day.
Is there a way to track them? CallerID I gather is spoofable, so that's
not very interesting. Do phone carriers keep any records of inbound
calls? Can ratepayers examine them?
Thanks for reading,
bob prohaska
Message-ID: <20210416145040.GA7625@telecom.csail.mit.edu>
Date: Fri, 16 Apr 2021 14:50:40 +0000
From: Bill Horne <malQRMassimilation@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Can robocalls be tracked?
On Fri, Apr 16, 2021 at 03:07:43AM -0000, bob prohaska wrote:
> In the past year or so the flux of robocalls seems to have
> increased. Lately I'm getting five to ten per day.
>
> Is there a way to track them? CallerID I gather is spoofable, so
> that's not very interesting. Do phone carriers keep any records of
> inbound calls? Can ratepayers examine them?
Oh, my my my ... where do I start?
The reason spoofed Called ID works is the same reason that we get spam
emails, the same reason that Blue Boxes worked, the same reason that
Citizens Band radios used to work and are now almost all useless.
We don't count costs much in America. Whenever it's possible to
"improve" a system or a service, we go ahead and do it, without asking
ourselves if it's a good idea or if the benefits justify the risks.
I don't know why. In the case of robocalls and spoofed Caller ID,
perhaps it's the result of the telephone network having been, for
almost all its history, a closed system that had no outside
competition for ideas, no internal or external process to guard
against unexpected results, and no meaningful standards of security.
Maybe it's because technocrats such as we have a kind of tunnel vision
that prevents us from seeing anything but the shortest path from a
"problem" to a "solution." Our collective consciousness does not allow
for suspicion or caution - just the need to solve any problem we're
asked to address.
I doubt it ever occurred to the engineers at Bell Laboratories that
allowing customer-provided-equipment (CPE) to supply Caller ID info
was an invitation to fraud. I doubt that their world-view allowed them
to even consider the posibility that someone would break their rules
for commercial gain.
I don't know the answer, but I think we need to consider the question
before we set about trying to "solve" a "problem" without thinking
if we should look behind the curtains of American business and ask
ourselves if the "cure" is, once again, worse than the disease.
Bill
--
Bill Horne
(Remove QRM from my email address to write to me directly)
Message-ID: <20210416135613.28898CC0@telecom2018.csail.mit.edu>
Date: Fri, 16 Apr 2021 13:56:13 +0000 (UTC)
From: Moderator <telecomdigestsubmissions@remove-this.telecom-digest.org>
Subject: Verizon Media debuts ad-targeting solution without
identifiers
By Robert Williams
Verizon Media this week introduced a way for marketers to target their
advertising without using individual identifiers. The media arm of the
telecom giant launched Next-Gen Solutions, which relies on contextual
and real-time information like weather, location and device type to
serve ads, even in the absence of third-party cookies or device IDs ...
https://www.marketingdive.com/news/verizon-media-debuts-ad-targeting-solution-without-identifiers/598427/
