FCC proposes $10 Million fine for spoofed robocalls

Fri Dec 20 20:00:00 UTC 2019

On Friday, 20 December, 2019 10:57, Mark Milhollan wrote:

>On Thu, 19 Dec 2019, Keith Medcalf wrote:

>>You should ALWAYS talk to the call center behind the robocaller.  The
>>robocaller (the one playing the message) is relatively local and the
>>cost of that call is minimal.  When you select to talk to the
>>robocaller, that generates an international handoff to a call center
>>in India.

>Generally the call center phone number is also "local" even if the warm
>body is in some other country as that usually occurs via SIP.

Be that as it may, every minute you keep the call center person on the
line is a minute they are not busily scamming someone else.
Furthermore, while it is merely anecdotal, I can indeed report that
since instituting a policy of ALWAYS answering robocalls and ALWAYS
keeping them talking as long as possible, the number of such calls has
decreased markedly, from several per day to now only one every couple of
weeks / month.

Because there *is* a cost associated with robo-scams, they must keep
score in order to maximize return for the resources consumed (unlike
e-mail spam scams which have effectively no need to prune the potential
target list) you simply have to make the "cost" of dialing your
telephone more expensive that the other couple billion potential
targets.  Its like being in a group being chased by a bear.  You needn't
run faster than the bear, merely faster than the slowest in the group.

-- 
The fact that there's a Highway to Hell but only a Stairway to Heaven
says a lot about anticipated traffic volume.