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Comment by exabrial | Hacker News Reader

Phone calls work the same way as email.

There's an incoming audio channel and some metadata [caller id]. You have no idea whether the metadata [email recv from] is spoofed. All you know _really_ know for sure is the carrier you're receiving the call from [sort like an IP address] and whether or not you "trust" them not to lie about the authenticity of the metadata.

If the FCC wants to tackle this problem, as another HN user said, we really just need the equivalent of DKIM and SPF signing of the call metadata.

Despite the TCPA Act outlawing the calling of cellphones... robo callers in the USA rotate phone numbers very quickly, so as to prevent anyone from figuring out who and when placed a call.

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I very often get spam robocalls to my cell phone (on T-Mobile US prepaid) that come from a number identical to my phone number but with the last 4 digits altered (and random every time).

Yup, me too on Verizon.

FYI, T-Mobile US rolled out a free spam blocking feature at the start of the year, but you have to opt into it (presumably because of the risk of dropping valid calls). I don't know if it applies to prepaid, unfortunately. If you log into your account it should be listed under features you can add to your line.

Thanks. I just turned this on.

I get calls with no caller ID, ie its blank or "0" or a number too short to be a phone number. I don't understand why a carrier would forward that call to a terminal, that's like sending on an email with no (or an impossible) sender address.

They get paid to carry those calls, so why wouldn't they forward them?

Presumably, it's a feature people would pay for and or switch carriers for.

Because of decency. I never get calls like the ones described here, and I live in the Netherlands.

"Decency" is not something that exists in the telco world - the industry is based on shady practices but nobody wants to change that as it would put a lot of middlemen out of business.

In a world where you can watch a 1GB Youtube video in Europe that's hosted in the US at pretty much no charge, do you think it's decent to charge for texts - something that's only 160 bytes of data? Yet that's exactly what the telcos are doing.

I have free unlimited texts. I call for free after 10 minutes, and I keep minutes and MBs for 3 months.

I don't think every telco is criminal.

I've been getting robot calls/voicemails (IRS/FBI impersonator) where the scammer leaves a callback number that matches the caller ID number. Always an 800 number. Any insight into how this works for the scammer, how they don't get caught doing this?

That's probably a different breed of scam. One in which they claim some tenuous relationship with you. Could be a form or survey you filled out, sweepstakes entry etc. For these, I would try the "take me off your list" response. It usually works for me for persistent, non-spoofed calls.

I should have been specific, these calls are impersonating the FBI and IRS. I do know that they started after I registered a domain with a real phone number - lesson learned.

Do you mind sharing the number they used?

One from about a few weeks ago was: 1-866-978-6618

It's listed online by other people as a scam number. I did report it, and I ought to collect the other numbers as well.

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