FCC sets a record breaking $120m fine for rude robocalls The FCC has upheld a $120m fine levied against a man accused of making 96 million illegal robocalls. The commission on Thursday announced it would indeed seek to collect the massive fine it had first proposed against Adrian Abramovich in 2017. Abramovich, a Miami-based travel marketer it said was behind tens of millions of …
Let's face it, fines for these kinds of things are eyewash for the masses. The laws should be changed and penalties should increase and minimum sentences in years or even decades. Make the penalty high enough and the problem will drop. However, there are those who always thing that a) they're smarter than the law and b) the law doesn't apply to them.
There are two types of criminals.
One won't be stopped by any kind of sentence, because he or she has very little to lose, or a mental state or situation which hinders to asses or fear consequences. Many of these are often involved in crimes which isn't about big money. Prison can't be a deterrent - just a way to keep them locked for a while.
But the other, which mostly include white-collar criminals, may be more careful if their operations means a long time in a jail, and losing all the accumulated money, especially it they get caught early and money effectively tracked and recoverd. Otherwise, they regard a little time in jail as a "business cost" - offset by the opportunity to get rich easily and quickly.
"He wasn't fined for robocalling, he was nailed mainly for spoofing the caller ID."
And having a record message. In the US, all telemarketering calls must have a live person on the other end; recorded messages are always illegal. It is still perfectly legal, unfortunately, for politicians and wanna-be politicians to robocall you to the living end. So long as they do it between certain hours.
Three reasons for punishments: getting even, deterrence, fairness. Let the punishment fit the crime. Put the convict in a cell where a loud bell goes off at random intervals, day and night. If they don't turn it off, it continues to ring. Put the switch to turn off the bell in an inconvenient location. They also must have no access to a phone or other means of communication, because he otherwise may set up a new scam. In addition, there must be an appropriate fine, which is much larger than what.he could have earned.
Have fun putting people who are robocalling from India with a VoIP number in jail.
The first step is to force the phone companies to actually do something about the problem. They have the ability to stop this, or at least greatly reduce it. But they are too lazy (and cheap) to do anything substantial. Some let you use the service nomorobo.com, but that is not bulletproof because illegal robocallers can just change their numbers daily and even use an active number belonging to a real person. I have had people call me because a robocaller used my number. Stopping robocalls isn't going to increase the phone companies' revenue so they will not do anything about it unless forced.
Why one or the other? Do both. The message should be, pull this shit, and your prison time will be a luxury compared to the poverty that awaits you when you get out. And give the same punishment to those who create and spread computer viruses. Tired of all this BS.
1. Make the telecoms provider equally responsible for payment of fines, they after all could not have been unaware of the robo calls and they allowed the spoofing feature.
2. Fine the companies who paid for and profitted from the offensive robocalling, without them then there would have been no profit to the assualt.
“We send thousands of calls out using numbers that don't belong to is on a daily basis.”
Then fucking stop doing it. Don’t care if it’s currently legal, it should be illegal. There is no legitimate reason to use a false number. If you’re not prepared to identify yourself with a number owned by you then you fall into the scumbag category.
"Then fucking stop doing it. Don’t care if it’s currently legal, it should be illegal. There is no legitimate reason to use a false number."
So you really think that number you see when your Insurance company phone up is ACTUALLY coming from someone working for that company? Or are you really that naive?
Or may you WANT to call your bank back on an international number, you know that one registered in Bangalore.
"So you really think that number you see when your Insurance company phone up is ACTUALLY coming from someone working for that company?"
If it isn't it's a problem. In fact, it's one of two problems. One is that it's a fraudster. The other is that the company is outsourcing its relationship with its customers which, in the long run, is an incredibly stupid thing to do.
This, of course, introduces a third problem: telling which is which. Or, to express it a different way, it makes the telephone, like email, into an untrustable means of communication. If a communication, possibly urgent, from a business such as a bank, is untrustable that is a very serious matter. Any time my bank tried to call me they were unable to authenticate themselves so I simply told them I didn't believe they were the bank. (As these were marketing calls no harm was done.)
"So you really think that number you see when your Insurance company phone up is ACTUALLY coming from someone working for that company? Or are you really that naive?"
In such a situation, phones would likely be internally routed through a PBX or the like. In which case, the call would be routed through the internal network before being forwarded outside, and that outside link to the phone company would be the "front door" number, which the Caller ID would report. That's fair enough, as the phone company loses control beyond the front door anyway. Still, perhaps a level of control and liability is needed in such a setup to stem abuse of such a system (like requiring phone company inspection of the interface and assurance it belongs to just one firm).
@Charles 9
In such a situation, phones would likely be internally routed through a PBX or the like. In which case, the call would be routed through the internal network before being forwarded outside
Yeah, that's one way to do it. Company in one location contracts out calling customers (I'm talking about calls the customers actually want, not unwanted calls) to a call centre in another location (or possibly more than one call centre). So when the call centre makes a call, it dials a special number for the company that contracted it, a number that is a hunt group for several (perhaps large values of "several") lines at the company itself. Those lines go to a PBX, which then forwards the call to the customer over yet more lines, all to make it look like the call came from the company itself. That's some rather expensive tromboning, requiring twice the number of lines as actual calls and a PBX.
Or, the company authorizes the call centre to make calls on its behalf using the appropriate calling ID for the company. Legal, legit and moral (again, assuming these are calls the customers want to receive).
Either way the customer gets a call that identifies itself as being from the company (but is actually from a call centre). One way is a lot more expensive than the other.
Note: "Lost all faith..." didn't explicitly say that this was what the call centre was doing but he/she/it left enough clues that it was easy to figure out. Yet few people managed to do so. Not even after I responded to him and left a clue that people were missing something.
"Then fucking stop doing it. Don’t care if it’s currently legal, it should be illegal. There is no legitimate reason to use a false number. If you’re not prepared to identify yourself with a number owned by you then you fall into the scumbag category."
If someone is calling me from a support center I'd rather have the support line show up on the CallerID than their individual extension. Playing phone tag with a support group can be hard enough, but having to do it with a specific individual is nigh on impossible.
So there are definitely cases where I see it being a benefit, but you should have to apply for a permit of some kind to do it.
We send thousands of calls out using numbers that don't belong to is on a daily basis.
That was very naughty of you. I'm not talking about making those calls. I'm talking about trolling people by not explaining why such a situation pertains.
Then again, you gave all the clues so they ought to have been able to figure it out.
Have an upvote.
Regulate to make it opt-in only. Even opt-out lists may not work fully, especially if not all numbers are allowed (i.e. mobile ones).
I can't really see why someone should be allowed to waste my time and interrupt me if I didn't explicitly allowed him. It's a basic human right to be left in peace.
At least in old times you could unleash dogs against beggars at your door... and some of those beggars were really poor people, not just fraudsters trying to deceive you.
Actually, it isn't. FCC surprised politicians in the last election when the chairman told them that calling mobiles wasn't allowed:
https://www.fcc.gov/political-campaign-robocalls
Don't ask me if the difference between mobile and landlines phone makes any sense, but that's the law...
The First Amendment gives you the right to speech, doesn't force anybody to listen to you...
"Actually, it isn't. FCC surprised politicians in the last election when the chairman told them that calling mobiles wasn't allowed:"
That's ONLY because. when the rule was first issued, cell phone users got charged significantly going AND coming (because the wireless network gets used either way). If it weren't for prepaid plans that still only allocate so many minutes (many postpaid plains are flat-rate with calls now), there would be a push to relax the rule, especially with the rise in telephone cord-cutting (thus a similar push for 911 identification of cell phones for emergency services--it dovetails).
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