Yes, It’s Bad. Robocalls, and Their Scams, Are Surging.

"Feds crack down on brothers behind 45 million illegal robocalls

Three New Jersey brothers will pay $1.6 million to settle charges of instigating more than 45 million illegal robocalls nationwide, including to tens of millions of Americans on the Federal Trade Commission's Do Not Call Registry, the agency announced on Friday...

According to the FTC's suit, Joseph, Sean and Raymond Carney initiated more than 45 million illegal telemarketing calls to people across the U.S. between January 2018 and March 2019 to pitch a line of septic tank cleaning products. Most of the calls, or 31 million, were placed to numbers on the FTC's registry of people who don't want to receive marketing calls..."

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/robocalls-ftc-crack-down-telemarketing/

 

FCC proposes $5M fine for election robocalls from conservative activists
August 24, 2021
https://eu.detroitnews.com/story/ne...-robocalls-conservative-activists/5578421001/

 

VoIP made this all too easy. You can put in anyone else's number and make fake calls all day.

 

New FCC rules could force telephone companies to block robocalls to 911 call centers
The FCC has been working on the issue since 2012.
September 30, 2021
https://www.engadget.com/fcc-911-robocall-rulemaking-215014128.html

 

FCC aggressively moves to block spam calls

https://www.zdnet.com/article/fcc-aggressively-moves-to-block-spam-calls/?ftag=TRE-03-10aaa6b&bhid={$external_id}&mid={$MESSAGE_ID}&cid={$contact_id}&eh={$CF_emailHash}

 

T-Mobile says it blocked 21 billion scam calls this year
December 20, 2021

T-Mobile: T‑Mobile Releases 2021 Scam and Robocall Report

 

I'm exclusively on landline, and over sixty (not quite elderly but getting there), so I'll add my two cents. When I first got my phone, like twenty years ago, I was soon inundated with crap calls. I got a TeleZapper off Radio Shack, and that knocked down the number of calls by about 50%. Sometime after I became aware of the 'Do Not Call Registry':

https://www.donotcall.gov/

After joining, the remaining 50% was cut in half within a month. The last 25% was diehards that just did not comprehend that 'no means no', but quickly got the message once I had reported 5 or 10 of them.Guess they like to gossip among themselves, as my phone number was blacklisted within six months.

This halcyon period lasted many long years until I got VDSL, the ISP took over my phone service and changed the number. Within a month or so, the dirtbags found out the new number was not on their 'no-fly list', and started up pestering me. Out came the TeleZapper from storage, and off to the Do Not Call site I went. It was rinse and repeat time, and I am glad to report the process works as good today as it did way back when. Maybe took an extra month to shake loose the diehards (guess the current batch of dirtbags ain't quite the gossips the old crew was), but I'm pretty much free of crap calls.

 

Good. Even worse than getting those calls was them spoofing local phone numbers to make them.

 

I'm having trouble with the idea that this is an issue. We've had caller ID longer than we've had IP based phones. They should be harder to spoof. I can go into the company VoIP portal right now and set the phone number to something other than the actual phone number for any extension on the system. I had no such option on the old landline phones. I'm sure an experienced hacker has the ability to take it ever farther on the IP systems.