Telecommunications policy

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I am not sure where this policy idea might live, so here goes.

Our home phone is useless due to junk calls and it’s getting worse on my cell as well. The do not call registry appears to be as effective as most other federal endeavors- useless. So here is the idea:

  • Make it a felony to spoof or otherwise manipulate one’s caller ID data, with one count being given for every instance of a call being made using spoofed data. No loopholes or exemptions
  • Require telecommunications companies to validate the meta data (including caller ID) of every piece of traffic they accept on their network. Validation consists of verifying that the number / name associated with the originating port matches the calls meta data. Give the companies a phase in period (maybe 5 years), after that the become financially responsibly for fraud perpetrated via their network through use of spoofed meta data.

Right now phone companies have little incentive to crack down on these practices, and the FTC is far too slow to catch up with these scammers. This gives those who are closest to the problem incentive to fix it.

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It looks like the FCC has been trying, maybe not fast enough, but they do list several ways to block spam calls, or at least minimize them.

“Stop Unwanted Robocalls and Texts | Federal Communications Commission”

“Call Blocking Tools and Resources | Federal Communications Commission”

Have you ever heard of “Spammer Payback” on YouTube? They are a group of tech-savvy people who spam the smammers. They have videos showing them reverse tracking spammers, finding out where they are located (al lot in India), and utilizing software to delete their hard drives, logging on the their web cams and security cameras and watching them, placing software on their computers that will delete the hard drives of all computers on their network, etc. Some people are getting the payback but not enough.

“https://www.youtube.com/@ScammerPayback/videos”

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Yes, I have read about the counter spam efforts, it’s certainly satisfying. So far all efforts to address this plague have omitted those who are actually best positioned to solve this problem. They know that a call originating from a point in India or Nigeria with an 805 area code in the meta data is fake, so reject it. The federal government is too slow and forcing a billion users in the US to address and keep working to evade an evolving threat is crazy. It would be great if congress would kick out the telecommunications lobbyists and actually work for the voters on this.

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