Industry Explores Strategies for Combatting VoIP-Enabled Robocalls
"Rachel from card member services” keeps calling, and industry officials are trying to figure out how to silence her nefarious rings. Officials gathered Thursday at the FTC’s “Robocall Summit” to deal with the issue, as “Rachel” became a kind of shorthand for the transnational networks of robocallers intent on manipulating the VoIP system. Until the industry implements new solutions as it transitions to an all-Internet Protocol network, filing a complaint with donotcall.gov is the “only viable option” for consumers who get unwanted robocalls, said FCC Chief Technology Officer Henning Schulzrinne. The FTC also announced a $50,000 prize for anyone who can provide a technical solution to block robocalls.
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Cheap VoIP services, the ability to spoof numbers, and inexpensive labor make robocalling “particularly attractive now,” and “much more scalable than the old boiler room ever was,” Schulzrinne said. Law enforcement, using a “manual and tedious trace-back” method and faxing out one subpoena at a time, can’t compete with shifting numbers and a “transnational robocaller ecosystem,” he said. “The automation has been all on the side of the bad guys. ... Law enforcement operates in the analog world."
The traditional circuit switched network is a closed system, with a “finite universe of voice providers,” said Kevin Rupy, USTelecom senior director-policy. Today, interconnected and over-the-top VoIP and autodialers make up a “vast ecosystem” of voice services delivered over a network, as the public-switched telephone network has been “subsumed by the Internet,” he said. When phone operators see a “mass calling event,” it’s impossible for them to tell the difference between legitimate calls providing emergency notifications or school closings, and malicious calls attempting phishing schemes or a nuisance attack, Rupy said. It’s a “technological arms race” between the robocallers and the telcos, he said. “It can be like a game of Whac-a-Mole out there."
Federally, the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 is the main source of the FCC’s power, said Eric Bash, associate Enforcement Bureau chief. The agency has taken 10 “penalty actions” against companies, valued at around $3.5 million, but it doesn’t have the power under the Communications Act to seek an injunction in federal court, he said.
There are opportunities for states to have stricter robocalling laws than are available federally, said Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller. That state banned the use of autodialers in 1988, even for political calls, and has successfully defended its law against legal challenges, he said. The “right of privacy in the home trumps political free speech to blast out tens of thousands of calls to Hoosiers,” he said. Because its state rules were much more strict than the federal rules, Indiana residents were “blessed” with “a decade of peace and quiet,” he said. But that quiet made the rise in VoIP autodialing schemes more of a shock in Indiana, he said, noting the “righteous indignation” he frequently sees in letters from residents.
In discussions he’s attended, people have looked to the federal government for help, Zoeller said. “I can always turn the TV or the radio off so I don’t have to watch a dress malfunction or something, but I can’t turn the phone off unless I'm just going to cut off my communications with my friends and family,” he said. “Even if it comes in the form of more regulation, at least protect my dear friends who just want to take a nap."
Industry might be able to implement solutions as it works on “replacing the vestiges” of circuit switched to an all-IP network, Schulzrinne said. To combat scammers, the industry will need verified and trustable phone numbers, routine tracing of call routing in the VoIP world, and a process to automatically route subpoenas with “cryptographic validation,” he said: Only then can we “even the scales between the bad guys who automate and law enforcement that is operating in a manual role."
Also Thursday the FTC began a “Robocall Challenge,” a $50,000 prize for the best technical solution to block robocalls on landlines and cellphones (http://xrl.us/bnuwij). The commission will give participants anonymized data on consumer complaints about robocalls made between 2008 and 2012; solutions will be judged based on how well they work, ease of use, and whether they can be rolled out. Schulzrinne, FTC Chief Technologist Steve Bellovin and Kara Swisher of All Things Digital will judge the contest, which runs Oct. 25-Jan. 17. “The FTC is attacking illegal robocalls on all fronts, and one of the things that we can do as a government agency is to tap into the genius and technical expertise among the public,” said David Vladeck, director of the agency’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. “The winner of our challenge will become a national hero.”