By Andrew Berg, CED, 01/14/2016
The company Thursday announced a new online sign-up process for Nomorobo, a third-party call-blocking application. TWC says it has integrated the feature into its home phone management Website, VoiceZone.
"With robocalls being the largest category of complaints at the Federal Communications Commission, we want to do everything we can to empower our customers to take control over the calls that come into their home," said Jeff Lindsay, GVP and general manager of TWC Home Phone. "Nomorobo, along with several other privacy features we offer, provides our customers peace of mind in knowing that illegal telemarketing and robocalls calls won't get through."
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Neal McLain
***** Moderator's Note *****The article goes on to say:
Nomorobo automatically blocks phone calls from many telemarketers and robocallers. The service takes advantage of TWC's "Answer Anywhere" technology, a feature that allows incoming calls to be routed to up to five different telephone lines. The call rings in the home and simultaneously at Nomorobo's servers. If the number is on a so-called "blacklist," the call will end after one ring.
... which leads me to believe that the service is assuming that calls are all being made with the same caller id. That won't work: robocallers have been using "lookalike" CID for years, with calls marked as coming from lines in the same exchange as the called number.
As with spam prevention, multiple technical fixes have been proposed: there is, sad to say, no FUSRP - no Final, Ultimate Solution to the Robocall Problem.
The only way to combat robocalls is to make them unprofitable: follow the money and penalize the profiteers. The problem with *doing* that is simple: there's no legal basis for doing it. The robocall law is written to /sound/ tough, but to /be/ /toothless/ - requiring aggrieved parties to seek civil remedies against powerful, deep-pocket corporations.
Those of us on the receiving end of these calls have a problem: our elected representatives won't offend any campaign contributor, any corporate executives, anyone more powerful than the workaday folks who call on them to act. Their only "action" has been to direct the FTC - one of the most toothless agencies in the government - to make inquiries and publish papers and *appear* to be on the job.
We can disredard any claims that these calls are coming from overseas or from anonymous sources or are untraceable: that is, and always has been, a smoke screen. It doens't mater where from or how the calls are /arriving/: what matters is where the money is going /to/, and if there's one thing that governments are good at, it's keeping tabs on money changing hands, especially via electronic means like credit cards.
It's an election year, with 1/3 of our senators and all of our congressmen working their phone lists and making lots of robocalls to keep their phony-baloney jobs. If you want to stop robocalls, send them a handwritten letter - email doesn't count, and typewritten letters aren't considered either - and tell them that you're fed up with their shell games. *THAT* is how to stop robocalls.
Bill Horne Moderator