Robocalls Flooding Your Cellphone? Here’s How to Stop Them

Re:Robocalls Flooding Your Cellphone? Here’s How to Stop Them by ChuckMcM on Wednesday August 16, 2017 @02:05AM (#15025273)

One of the sad things that broke when number porting became a thing was there was no definitive answer of which phones were cell phones and which were land lines. This was unfortunate because if you were called on your cell phone for a long time it would cost you money, and if someone called in an unsolicited way, you had 'damages' that you could sue for on the theory that they knew it was a cell phone and they called it anyway. Now however they have reasonable doubt and so they call whenever.

I wrote the FCC once and suggested that a good use of some of those fees I pay would be to create a service that would instantly back trace and log a complaint on a number using telemetry from inside the phone system. That combined with a federal criminal statute which allowed for jail time for masking the origin of a phone call and I think you could make to fairly costly for the owners and enablers of this stuff.

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Re:Robocalls Flooding Your Cellphone? Here’s How to Stop Them by ddurkin on Wednesday August 16, 2017 @02:34AM (#15025377)

Databases already exist which identify cell-phone vs landline.

https://www.neustar.biz/risk/compliance-solutions/tcpa

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Re:Robocalls Flooding Your Cellphone? Here’s How to Stop Them by ukmobile on Wednesday August 16, 2017 @03:01AM (#15025488)

In the UK, all mobile numbers start with "07". Simple solution to this problem.

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Re:Robocalls Flooding Your Cellphone? Here’s How to Stop Them by iampims on Wednesday August 16, 2017 @03:08AM (#15025507)

Until you run out of numbers starting with 07?

France started with 06 and is now using 07… but 08 is already taken for some other purposes.

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Re:Robocalls Flooding Your Cellphone? Here’s How to Stop Them by Nexxxeh on Wednesday August 16, 2017 @05:20AM (#15026059)

Then existing 07x numbers would be made 071x numbers, and repeat.

But the existing 07x range is effectively 9 digits long, (with a few chunks out of it) so we're probably good for a while.

We've not started 072 and barely touched 076 (and 071 is currently unused but that's sensible if the existing might ever be bumped to start 071).

Our population count is a good way way away from being 9 digits.

Already (because of number porting) you have numbers from networks now home in the middle of number ranges of their competitors.

But I think we're more likely to see a separation of number/device before that 071x happens. Devices or SIMs will have an IPv6 address and your number is separate but accessible. Time will tell.

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Re:Robocalls Flooding Your Cellphone? Here’s How to Stop Them by smellf on Wednesday August 16, 2017 @03:32AM (#15025614)

What does it matter if the numbers are contiguous? Just keep allocating space for mobile numbers.

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Re:Robocalls Flooding Your Cellphone? Here’s How to Stop Them by stordoff on Wednesday August 16, 2017 @01:13PM (#15029217)

Surely you can just add more digits? Once 07XXX XXX XXX is exhausted, you could start issuing 071XXX XXX XXX numbers. It's been done with POTS numbers before (e.g. Sheffield - transitioned to 6-digits in 1965, 7-digits in 1995)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/0114

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Re:Robocalls Flooding Your Cellphone? Here’s How to Stop Them by superflyguy on Wednesday August 16, 2017 @04:26AM (#15025830)

Some non-mobile numbers also start with 07.

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