<story><title>The FCC Has Fined Robocallers $208M, Collected $6,790</title><url>https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-fcc-has-fined-robocallers-208-million-its-collected-6-790-11553770803?mod=rsswn</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>lukebuehler</author><text>A lot of people point out that telecom companies should do something but aren&amp;#x27;t because it&amp;#x27;s lucrative for them or too expensive to fix.&lt;p&gt;Are telecom companies not realizing how much they are hurting themselves with this in the long term? People will stop using phone numbers altogether. Using the phone has become such a pain, at least in the US, that whenever I can, I used different ways of communicating. WhatsApp, iMesage, Skype, etc. The incessant robocalls have definitely motivated me to move away from traditional phone calls faster than I would otherwise.&lt;p&gt;Lastly, maybe this is what these companies want, i.e., that I just use their data plan, but then that makes me way less likely to stay loyal.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>onetimeusename</author><text>They are slow to act because it is unclear whether it is justified in the law for them to block what they believe is spam or if a customer wants to receive a call.&lt;p&gt;Section 202 of Telecommunications Act details that telecoms cannot discriminate connections so they have been unwilling to block spam if it can lead to breaking the law[1].  The FCC has been trying to change that by rolling out new guidance on what can definitely be blocked[2].  One of the new rules defines a new legal safe harbor for carriers that block calls that are unauthenticated using a new protocol that is expected to be rolled out by year end, 2019.&lt;p&gt;[1]: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.law.cornell.edu&amp;#x2F;uscode&amp;#x2F;text&amp;#x2F;47&amp;#x2F;202&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.law.cornell.edu&amp;#x2F;uscode&amp;#x2F;text&amp;#x2F;47&amp;#x2F;202&lt;/a&gt; 
[2]: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.fcc.gov&amp;#x2F;document&amp;#x2F;fcc-affirms-robocall-blocking-default-protect-consumers-0&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.fcc.gov&amp;#x2F;document&amp;#x2F;fcc-affirms-robocall-blocking-d...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>The FCC Has Fined Robocallers $208M, Collected $6,790</title><url>https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-fcc-has-fined-robocallers-208-million-its-collected-6-790-11553770803?mod=rsswn</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>lukebuehler</author><text>A lot of people point out that telecom companies should do something but aren&amp;#x27;t because it&amp;#x27;s lucrative for them or too expensive to fix.&lt;p&gt;Are telecom companies not realizing how much they are hurting themselves with this in the long term? People will stop using phone numbers altogether. Using the phone has become such a pain, at least in the US, that whenever I can, I used different ways of communicating. WhatsApp, iMesage, Skype, etc. The incessant robocalls have definitely motivated me to move away from traditional phone calls faster than I would otherwise.&lt;p&gt;Lastly, maybe this is what these companies want, i.e., that I just use their data plan, but then that makes me way less likely to stay loyal.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>sj4nz</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m already there wanting to stop using phone numbers.  So. Much. There.&lt;p&gt;I haven&amp;#x27;t had a &amp;quot;land line&amp;quot; in multiple-decades.  My short list of &amp;quot;the next thing&amp;quot; requires:&lt;p&gt;- Ability to install on a mobile device without any connection to a &amp;quot;phone number.&amp;quot;  Phone numbers in my mind are dead.  
 - Skip the synchronous social convention of calling.  Everything should be async by default. You don&amp;#x27;t ever cause someone&amp;#x27;s device to interrupt them.  This is already culturally &amp;quot;accepted&amp;quot; with SMS.  Unopened messages are deleted after some number of days.
 - With permission, these asynchronous messages should be forwardable. You give permission in advance of course, and then you can avoid having to repeat yourself again and again.
 - TMDA style whitelisting for unknown public keys wishing for contact. Addresses need some kind of seniority (older than 30-days) and some reasonable integration into the network at large (vouching connections between other people with &amp;quot;skin in the game&amp;quot;, akin to a shared reputation--If I could remember the name of that early social network that tried to do this, avogato.org?  Something like that.) 
 - Mesh networking forever. Decentralize it all.&lt;p&gt;This is not something that I think can be a &amp;quot;startup,&amp;quot; because this needs to be a protocol, not tied to any firm.  If anyone&amp;#x27;s software works with the protocol, then let the &amp;quot;best installable&amp;quot; win.  The closest thing to this right now is Scuttlebutt protocol and if someone could re-introduce contact sharing via &amp;quot;bumping&amp;quot; (using the accelerometer and GPS location and time together) devices together to exchange public keys, that particular bit of UX could go a long way to making it easier to adopt.  However, the worst part of Scuttlebutt&amp;#x27;s capabilities has been the storage consumption for very popular identities that often consumes all the available memory on smaller devices.  It needs data-storage hygenics--some way for the end-user to state what kind of data they want to keep and what they wish to ignore.</text></comment>