[smachiz]

Are you referring to STIR/SHAKEN that is a requirement and has been/is being rolled out?

I'm not sure how much was commercial benefit vs lazyness/no incentive to solve the issue directly - the telcos aren't making a lot of money on inbound calling. It's just a problem that didn't impact them directly - only their customers.

[PaybackTony]

Have to touch on this as it's a common theme to my response. There absolutely are regulations. However, regulations being in place, and the enforcement of these regulations are different. STIR/SHAKEN is a requirement, however it's an easy requirement for scammers to meet. (Numbers are super cheap to buy in bulk, pennies per month typically). Sooner or later they'll run out.

The second side of the regulation miss is that carriers have to self-report much of the time. These centers pay into the 6 figures monthly to their carriers. The carriers know exactly what kind of traffic is being sent through and many times aide these scammers in shaping the traffic to look more legit. Auto-warranty scams in the past? Huge amounts of that traffic were routed through the likes of Y-Tel and a couple others. Regulators knew this but enforcement took years to happen. It's the same right now.

Lastly is the issue of what happens once enforcement occurs? The answer is not great: The scammers change numbers and keep going. They aren't local and it's not cut and dry when it comes to continuous enforcement against foreign entities. Their carriers still support them and the fines are typically less than a month's revenue from the larger outfits (think Uber).

Better meta-data helps aide robo / scam / spam blockers. IMO, we should just shut down these carriers who knowingly aide these scammers. We know who they are, they aren't hard to find.

[smachiz]

Isn't that basically what they did? I think the FCC authorized the disconnection of a handful of service providers, and has been aggressively sending notices to others.

https://www.engadget.com/robocall-company-may-receive-the-la...

[pards]

The telco's complacency have trained their customers to not answer the phone thereby destroying one of their primary businesses. Gen Z and Y consider it rude to call people.

[smachiz]

I think that was true long before robo calling was a big thing.

Since texting and even back from the AIM/IRC generation - when I was in college 20 years ago, with T9, people were already primarily were texting not calling.