Interesting People mailing list archives
Re Nearly half of cellphone calls will be scams by 2019, report says
From: "Dave Farber" <farber () gmail com>
Date: Thu, 20 Sep 2018 18:56:37 +0900
Begin forwarded message:
From: "Wendy M. Grossman" <wendyg () pelicancrossing net> Date: September 20, 2018 at 6:38:18 PM GMT+9 To: dave () farber net, ip <ip () listbox com> Subject: Re: [IP] Re Nearly half of cellphone calls will be scams by 2019, report says For IP, if you wish. In answer to 2), the reason we have clickable URLs in email is because marketing and designers won abd HTML email became a thing. Plain text email is safer in all sorts of ways...but try to get people to use it. In answer to 1), could I point out that the claim that half of all phone calls will be scams - or spams, since the article is not clear which one it's talking about and uses the terms interchangeably - is coming from a *company that sells blocking technology* to phone carriers. There would appear to be some substantial self-interest in hyping up the numbers. I have no doubt that phone scams are growing as email is declining as a useful vector (see: https://www.statista.com/statistics/420391/spam-email-traffic-share/). I seriously doubt this report's numbers. That said, the scam phone calls I'm worried about most at this time are election-related - calls that tell voters they have to re-register, calls that tell them one party votes on Tuesday but the other on Wednesday, etc. Some more examples here: https://newrepublic.com/article/150265/lying-election-free-speech-fraud wgOn 09/20/2018 02:08 AM, Dave Farber wrote:Begin forwarded message: *From: *Doug Humphrey <doug () joss com <mailto:doug () joss com>> *Subject: **Re: [IP] Nearly half of cellphone calls will be scams by 2019, report says* *Date: *September 20, 2018 9:37:31 JST *To: *dave () farber net <mailto:dave () farber net> *Cc: *ip <ip () listbox com <mailto:ip () listbox com>> Two things that puzzle me; first, why whitelisting (only allowing known contacts) in email and, after reading this, cell phones, isn’t more popular, and second why email programs allow clicking on a URL contained in an email.... On 1) I can see an argument for strangers calling you in an emergency, or someone you know calling from an unknown number, but there is a little engineering in the UI that should help with that. On 2) there is no excuse to allow a clickable URL except “it is convenient, and yeah, a little, so maybe with hard white listing you could trust them more? Seriously, I know it’s the wide open way that we have “always done it” but it is killing us, and not slowly.... Doug “No really get off my lawn” Humphrey On Sep 19, 2018, at 7:19 PM, Dave Farber <farber () gmail com <mailto:farber () gmail com>> wrote:Begin forwarded message:*From:* Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com <mailto:dewayne () warpspeed com>> *Date:* September 20, 2018 at 07:49:59 GMT+9 *To:* Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net <dewayne-net () warpspeed com <mailto:dewayne-net () warpspeed com>> *Subject:* *[Dewayne-Net] Nearly half of cellphone calls will be scams by 2019, report says* *Reply-To:* dewayne-net () warpspeed com <mailto:dewayne-net () warpspeed com> Nearly half of cellphone calls will be scams by 2019, report says By Hamza Shaban Sep 19 2018 <https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/09/19/nearly-half-cellphone-calls-will-be-scams-by-report-says/> Nearly half of all cellphone calls next year will come from scammers, according to First Orion, a company that provides phone carriers and their customers caller ID and call blocking technology. The Arkansas-based firm projects an explosion of incoming spam calls, marking a leap from 3.7 percent of total calls in 2017 to more than 29 percent this year, to a projected 45 percent by early 2019. “Year after year, the scam-call epidemic bombards consumers at record-breaking levels, surpassing the previous year, and scammers increasingly invade our privacy at new extremes,” Charles Morgan, the chief executive and head data scientist of First Orion, said in a blog post last week. The barrage of fraudulent calls has taken a more dire turn in recent months as scammers have targeted immigrant communities with urgent calls claiming ambiguous legal trouble. Across several U.S. metropolitan areas with large Chinese populations, scam callers have posed as representatives of the Chinese embassy while trying to trick Chinese immigrants and students into revealing their credit card numbers. The scammers told people that they have a package ready to be picked up at the Chinese consulate office, a first step in a ruse, or that they need to turn over information to resolve a legal issue, according to the Federal Trade Commission. Other prominent spam calls involve fraudsters pretending to be a representative from a bank, a debt collector or cable company. The Internal Revenue Service has also warned taxpayers about phone scams. Callers use telephone numbers that mimic actual IRS assistance centers, claim to be IRS employees and use fake names and phony badge numbers. The IRS says victims are falsely told they owe money to the government and are urged to pay through a gift card or wire transfer. Scammers may also take advantage of the devastation caused by Hurricane Florence, the IRS warned. Scammers can pose as a charitable organization, preying on the generosity of Americans who want to help those affected by the storm. Scammers also trick people into answering their calls with a scheme known as neighborhood spoofing, in which they manipulate caller ID information so that their actual phone number is masked. Instead, the calls appear to have been placed locally. A person looking at their caller ID will see a number that matches their own area code, as if the caller is a neighbor or a relative. Because the number appears familiar, people are more likely to answer the call. More than half of all complaints received by the Federal Communications Commission — more than 200,000 of them — are about unwanted calls. The FCC said Americans received about 2.4 billion unwanted, automated calls each month, according to 2016 estimates. Charles Kennedy, a senior adjunct fellow at the tech policy think tank TechFreedom, said the problem of spam calls is difficult to solve because many of the offenders are hard to track down. It’s illegal for telemarketers to call someone whose number is on the national do-not-call registry, unless they have an existing business relationship or the phone owner’s explicit written permission. But Kennedy said that people who ignore the list or engage in deception are often hard to hold to account. They make calls from abroad, obscure their locations and place a tremendous number of calls. Technological, rather than legal, solutions hold more promise, Kennedy said, as phone carriers develop methods to block scammers before they reach consumers and to unmask their spoofed numbers. [snip] Dewayne-Net RSS Feed: http://dewaynenet.wordpress.com/feed/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/wa8dzpArchives <https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now> | Modify <https://www.listbox.com/member/?> Your Subscription | Unsubscribe Now <https://www.listbox.com/unsubscribe/?&&post_id=20180919210822:A8E66A48-BC71-11E8-8CDE-B7ADB0624B23> [Powered by Listbox] <https://www.listbox.com>-- www.pelicancrossing.net <- all about me Twitter: @wendyg -- This message was sent to the list address and trashed, but can be found online. at https://www.listbox.com/login/messages/view/20180920053908:03B50B90-BCB9-11E8-AAF1-ED0D8C9586DE
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- Re Nearly half of cellphone calls will be scams by 2019, report says Dave Farber (Sep 19)
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- re Nearly half of cellphone calls will be scams by 2019, report says Dave Farber (Sep 19)
- Re Nearly half of cellphone calls will be scams by 2019, report says Dave Farber (Sep 20)
- Re Nearly half of cellphone calls will be scams by 2019, report says Dave Farber (Sep 21)