[orev]

One of the biggest concerns I have with phone scams is that the people most vulnerable are the elderly, and they don’t have the knowledge on how to block these calls (if a technical solution is the only option).

And further to that, the elderly are also the ones who cannot block unknown numbers, because doctors’ offices seem to have random numbers they call you from (they may have a pool of numbers but it’s not reasonable to add all of them to contacts). Blocking all unknowns would block these important health related calls as well.

[thewebguyd]

> because doctors’ offices seem to have random numbers they call you from

This is a huge issue with scam/security awareness education. Too many legitimate orgs use the exact behaviors we tell people to avoid. Same thing with email, can't tell someone to never click links in emails when services keep relying on magic links, third-party notification domains, etc. SPF, DKIM, and DMARC do nothing because scammers will just typosquat.

In the phone number example, most of those numbers too are unlisted outbound numbers, you couldn't even google them to verify.

Half the battle is getting legitimate organizations to stop acting like scammers in the first place so that shady behavior becomes an obvious red flag again.

[bugcheck7b]

Just this week I got an email from Amex to be on the lookout for scams, and the email itself had a "login" button right in the top.

[LarsAlereon]

I work in this industry, and a big issue is that a major customer of the cheapest, shadiest telcos is the US federal government. Because they're "being responsible with your tax money." So cracking down on them will affect government calls and quickly generate too much pushback. "I don't care how scammy Bill's Discount No-Questions-Asked VoIP LLC is, the army uses them!"

[dredmorbius]

Got any references on this?

Which telcos?

[olyjohn]

And if you think spam calls on your cell phone are bad... oh boy, land lines get about 10x the calls. My theory is that because it's mostly older people who have land lines on top of the fact that spam laws are tighter for cell phones. There aren't enough land line users to complain, so not a big enough voice to make a public outcry. Cell phone users have no idea the problems that land lines have.

I know this because I had to spend 6 months taking care of my dad while he was dying. We had so many medical people calling us and making appointments, and doing tests, etc etc. And on top of it about 10-15 spam calls a day and it's impossible to differentiate via caller ID. This was all while I was also working full time from home. It's a real hellscape, and these phone scammers are really having a negative effect on people's lives. It made my life miserable at one of the hardest times of my life, and I have nothing but contempt for these fuckers, and no empathy left for the people making the phone calls either. They're all scumbags and deserve time in prison.

[kjellsbells]

In rural America, the major telcos choose not to help, and that is a big factor here. You can't do stir/shaken crypto attestation of calls over TDM, but the big guys refuse to sell SIP trunks to rural operators.

see [1] for more on why stir/shaken hasnt helped as much as it ought to.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48920432#48928781

[dredmorbius]

AARP's magazine and bulletin[1] are pretty much filled with scam-awareness articles every issue. It's an absolutely major concern.

________________________________

Notes:

1. Incidentally, the first and second largest-circulation magazines in the US now: <https://www.magazineline.com/blog/most-popular-magazines-in-...>.

[pixl97]

It being a major concern doesn't mean there's any solution around said concerns. Give me 100 old peoples phone numbers and I bet I could convince 10 of them that I am AARP trying to make them safe and eventually get money out of them.

[LorenPechtel]

Yup. My doc's appointment reminders come from some service in another state. It's a pool of numbers, sometimes they come up as suspected spam. I suspect the dodgy guys deliberately offer very good rates for things like this so people won't block them.