---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message-ID: <D607B8B3-19D5-4439-A459-113FDADE1F45@roscom.com> Date: Fri, 5 Aug 2016 00:27:52 -0400 From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com> Subject: Good news - the robocalling scourge may not be unstoppable after all Good news - the robocalling scourge may not be unstoppable after all | ArsTechnica New data shows that the majority of robot-enabled scam phone calls came from fewer than 40 call centers, a finding that offers hope the growing menace of robocalls can be stopped. The calls use computers and the Internet to dial thousands of phone numbers every minute and promote fraudulent schemes that promise to lower credit card interest rates, offer loans, and sell home security products, to name just a few of the scams. Over the past decade, robocall complaints have mushroomed, with the Federal Trade Commission often receiving hundreds of thousands of complaints each month. In 2013, the consumer watchdog agency awarded $50,000 to three groups who devised blocking systems that had the potential to help end the scourge. Three years later, however, the robocall problem seems as intractable as ever. http://arstechnica.com/ ***** Moderator's Note ***** I was one of the people the FTC interviewed while trying to find a solution. I told them that they were looking for a FUSSP. Bill Horne Moderator ------------------------------ Message-ID: <nnvqvf$n0m$1@reader2.panix.com> Date: Thu, 4 Aug 2016 16:37:03 +0000 (UTC) From: David Lesher <wb8foz@panix.com> Subject: Re: Alternatives to AT&T DSL service kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) writes: >> As far as I can tell, The U-verse AT&T is trying so valiantly to >> sell to me remains "copper to the premises". Does it somehow become >> exempt from "interconnect" rules if I change to U-verse? >Yes. The telephone service over U-verse is not tariffed and does not have >to meet the state PUC specifications in any way. They are not required to >do anything they don't want to with it. That Depends. (tm) You CAN keep POTS with U-Verse atop it; I set this up for friends. They got snookered into VOIP over U-Verse weeks later, but reclaimed POTS when I explained what had happened. The U-verse installers trashed the wiring around the demark and that was difficult to get straightened out again. (They didn't; the homeowner did with my remote help.) FIOS also allows you to keep pseudo-POTS, i.e. regulated service but carried over the glass. But their salesdroids will push had for you to get ""Digital Voice" I think it is called this week. -- A host is a host from coast to coast.................wb8foz@nrk.com & no one will talk to a host that's close.......................... Unless the host (that isn't close).........................pob 1433 is busy, hung or dead....................................20915-1433 ------------------------------ Message-ID: <no0148$25v$1@panix2.panix.com> Date: 4 Aug 2016 14:22:00 -0400 From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) Subject: Re: Alternatives to AT&T DSL service bob prohaska <bp@www.zefox.net> wrote: > The AT&T "tech" who visited did a reasonable job of showing me that > the premises-to-CO copper isn't the problem. He claimed the problem > is ~20 miles away, in Sacramento, in AT&T's "redback" routers. > Interestingly, the tech claimed he didn't know anybody who could > reliably solve the problem without changing my IP numbers. As a > stopgap he arranged to have "VCC" changed and that seems to have > helped some, but at least once an 80 _second_ ping time > occurred. Usually ping time to the peer is now around 10 ms, with > random packets taking tens to hundreds of times longer. Multi-minute > slowdowns seem to have gone away. >Does this story make sense, or am I now a mushroom? Make sense? AT&T having different groups that don't talk to one another and blame one another for problems? I wouldn't call that "making sense" but it's certainly not unusual. --scott -- "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." ------------------------------ ********************************************* End of telecom Digest Sat, 06 Aug 2016