News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Verified by Twilio by kylek on Thursday August 29, 2019 @11:05PM (#20835653)
Is anything preventing debt collectors from being Verified by Twilio?
Re:Verified by Twilio by jpearson on Thursday August 29, 2019 @11:27PM (#20835745)
I would expect that legitimate debt collectors will be verified by Twilio.

> Verified By Twilio displays company branding and a reason for the call right in front of the consumer

This should make the purpose of debt collection calls obvious, though I don't see how they plan to enforce accurate call descriptions.

Re:Verified by Twilio by ceejayoz on Friday August 30, 2019 @09:26AM (#20838331)
> I don't see how they plan to enforce accurate call descriptions.

A reporting/flagging system, perhaps? "This call wasn't as described". After enough reports, they lose the verified status.

Re:Verified by Twilio by Theophraustous on Friday August 30, 2019 @10:36AM (#20839018)
I've work for a debt collection company.

Typically, they do not handle their own phone numbers, their vendor for the dialer does. This is entirely dependent on the priorities of the vendor.

Due to the FDCPA, we are unable to give out the reason for our call as that would inform any 3rd party that the person we are calling to speak to is in debt.

The agents on the front line are scripted to advise them that we are calling in regards to a personal matter, or in response to the letter they received.

This gets even worse if your company name includes "Collections" or any variation of that, as they cannot give out their company name in that case unless prompted (UDAAP requires them to answer direct questions not about the loan in a straight forward way).

Re:Verified by Twilio by JoeAltmaier on Friday August 30, 2019 @10:42AM (#20839079)
All that sounds like an attempt to harass the recipient, with falsehoods and deceit. Which I suppose is the main business of a debt collector.
Re:Verified by Twilio by koolba on Thursday August 29, 2019 @11:07PM (#20835664)
Probably no different than the scammers that are A+ rated by the BBB.
Re:Verified by Twilio by TuringNYC on Thursday August 29, 2019 @11:16PM (#20835697)
It presumably prevents it by forcing them to use a single verified number per corporate entity — this once I blacklist that entity, I can be done with them. The real problem these days, IMHO, is not repeated calls but spoofed calls where the source number changes every day, and thus cannot be blocked. This would solve that.