Those auto warranty/credit card robocallers [Telecom]

Sep 10, 2009 2 Replies

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Michael Moroney 16 years ago

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PLEASE put "[Telecom]" in your subject line! *

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All of us (at least in the US, and probably Canada as well) have probably gotten those robocalls trying to sell auto warranties/fix credit cards/ whatever, always from a spoofed caller ID. These guys break at least

4 US laws/regulations that I can think of - calling do-not-call numbers, calling cell phones, machine sales pitch if you answer, spoofed caller ID. They've managed to avoid being shut down although there was a little effort to look into this when they called a congressman during a meeting or something.

How do they seem to get their large volume of calls into the phone system? (VOIP?) How do they choose the number to spoof? They seem to choose a number, use it for a few days and then start using another according to data on

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Since caller ID is easy to spoof why don't they use something random each time? How do they avoid getting nabbed/ shut down?

I haven't heard from them for a while, until today. This time they did something different. I received a call from the 702 area code on my older cell phone and when I looked at the call list to see where it was from, the phone number field was a bunch of left-pointing arrows and the "from" and time were a bunch of Chinese characters. What did they do to my phone and how? Trying to "return" the call to see what number it called didn't work.

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danny burstein 16 years ago

[snip]

The reason they've gotten away with it for so long is because the folk who could and should.. do something about it have been taking lessons from the same people who taught the SEC investigators who should have caught Madoff.

That being said, just the other day the FTC announced

[FTC press release]

For Release: 09/01/2009 FTC Settlement Bans Robocalls from Auto "Warranty" Company New Rule Prohibiting Unwanted Robocalls Takes Effect Today

American consumers won't be getting any more deceptive robocalls from the auto "warranty" company that bombarded them with millions of the prerecorded calls earlier this year, under a proposed settlement with the Federal Trade Commission.

The company, Transcontinental Warranty, Inc., and its owner will be permanently banned from making any prerecorded calls like the ones it used previously to trick consumers into buying vehicle service contracts under the guise that they were extensions of original vehicle warranties.

rest:

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Oh, and for good measure:

"The proposed settlement includes a $24 million judgment against the defendants, which is suspended because of their inability to pay."

- nothing in the press release about getting the banks, etc. to reverse and/or credit the people who were suckered into sending over money.

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Sam Spade 16 years ago

[Moderator snip]

Lots of change under Obama.

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