I get relentless text and phone spam calls - both robotic and with humans - from just a few voice over Internet platforms. Bandwidth.com, Neutral Tandem, and ALL the brands associated with Sinch (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinch_AB) like Inteliquent. Many of these companies got cease and desist orders in the past from the FTC. It didn’t help anything. We need to see them fined, shut down, and executives jailed.
What do you do when these lookups return the company that owns the number but the company says that they are not in control of the number? E.g, I have one number that keeps harassing me that reports as Verizon but Verizon says they have not been with Verizon since 2024.
There are other sites like this. And then you can use the carrier info, go to that platform‘s website, and submit an abuse complaint through their form. But all they will do is possibly block that one spammer from contacting your phone number while continuing to allow the spammer to operate. And of course they have other spammers as customers.
Better option is to skip their abuse form and send complaints to your state’s AG, to the FTC website, and FCC website. They’ll ask for a lot of info but I think it helps them identify the problematic companies.
You can also forward spam texts to 7726 (“SPAM”) in the US, and your carrier will use that info to take action.
I'm not positive, but i think they charge an astronomical amount for calls that don't originate from a local calling prefix. Of course you can get those, but some countries require ID.
Mainly I know that calling from a voip number was really expensive when I tried to set something up for a family member going on vacation to Europe. That probably cuts back on a lot of spam calls.
I don't know how it is with companies, but there are countries where you can have subscriptions which allows you to call any EU numbers without a surcharge. And what I saw weren't even that expensive, around 50 euros/month.
These are all platforms with many different products built but others on top of them. Shutting down all abuse is a cat and mouse game and not something they can "just do" if given tighter rules
This seems solvable. Put the person most closely traceable to the source of the spam in jail, like a form of KYC laws. If you can't identify the actual human who is causing you to put spam into the network, or that person is outside of your country's jurisdiction, then you are the one who goes to jail. If you don't want to go to jail, then don't accept calls from someone you can't point the finger at.
This is how Germany deals with torrent piracy. The net effect is that it was illegal to run a public WiFi hotspot until a special exemption was made for it. In 2017.
Shut that one down and jail the execs too. The number of people willing to take that chance is finite; it is more finite when the penalty is seen to be consistently applied.
This is why executives need to be held personally responsible when they direct a company to wilfully, blatantly, and repeatedly disregard laws to the detriment of society. These are people who should be in prison for a time, and barred from serving as an officer of a corporation for more time after that. Eventually people get the message; you don't get to break laws just because you hide behind the name of a company.
Sinch just keeps acquiring one company after the other and turning them into the new spam channel. Weirdly the only responsible player seems to be Twilio. The others refuse to identify the spammers that are their customers, and keep saying it’s not their responsibility since they’re a “wholesaler” (their words).
