TN: AT&T Text "Unsuccessful Payment" Scam Hits Robertson County [Telecom]

There are many robocall-based phising scams going on. Criminals are claiming to be Amazon, Chase Bank, a power utility and a pharmacy service, among others. They record greetings from the real outfits to sound real.

We really need a much tighter number identifier control system, as well as aggressive enforcement of fraud laws.

The reason we get forged "from" numbers on our caller-id's is the same reason we get spam in our emails: both the called-id system and the Internet's email system were designed by techies.

I've said this before, but it bears repeating: technical workers have a tendency toward tunnel vision. Given a problem to solve, we often put on blinders that block out everything except the path to the problem's solution. On the one hand, that gives us a very productive work habit which is much sought-after by employers. On the other hand, it leaves us with little appreciation for the larger world in which our designs will be put to use.

We get spam and forged caller-id because the people who designed the email and telephone systems were working with a world-view that did not allow for bad actors - it never occurred to them to anticipate that someone would break the rules for commercial gain, nor to we users to measure potential benefits against what are now obvious negatives. Caller-id and similar "value-added" features come with hidden costs, which are paid by the users, and it's long-past time that we all decided if the benefits are worth it.

Bill