RRAPTOR is a robocall surveillance platform that captures thousands of robocalls daily. It analyzes and groups them in many different ways, including matching keywords and phrases in the messages they play as well as inspecting the phone numbers that they use and the STIR/SHAKEN signatures they carry. Some of the most troubling calls are those that prey on vulnerable populations…
A large fraction of the robocalls we receive are placed by Lead Generators. This cottage industry is part of the massive world of marketing. Like a TV commercial or a billboard or a post card in your mailbox, a phone call from a lead generator is an attempt to sell you some product or service. Because telephone calls are more…
Virtually all VoIP call originators are now REQUIRED to sign their calls -- see our earlier post about this mandate. Despite this, some intermediate providers are not requiring their upstreams to properly sign their calls (or insisting on a thorough explanation of why they are sending calls unsigned). So the intermediate is signing calls – either on behalf of their…
The SIP Forum's twice-yearly events have been the place to go for the latest insights on STIR/SHAKEN. The week of October 17, they will hold their Enterprise Summit virtual event. It will be free to attend, just as their spring SIPNOC event was. SIPNOC drew an impressive audience with plenty of useful information being shared. ZipDX has a session on…
The Robocall Mitigation Database (RMD) is a cornerstone of the FCC’s Call Authentication (STIR/SHAKEN) Framework and must be incorporated into every provider’s Know-Your-Customer processes. Exactly how you do this will depend on the roles played by you and your call source along the call path. The table below shows the possibilities: We are not attorneys, but ZipDX puts this forward…
Last fall I posted, "Shouldn’t Neighbor Spoofing Be Illegal? Wait! It Already Is!" Most telecom experts think that if a telephone number is assigned to you, or you have the permission of the assignee, it is perfectly fine to use that number as your caller-ID when placing calls. But the Truth In Caller-ID Act does not say that. It says…
It’s been almost a year since we posted about Dialer Traffic In the Spotlight. Not much has changed. Brief calls are a normal part of conversational (human-to-human) telephone traffic. But when short-duration calls DOMINATE the traffic flow from one provider to another, the industry labels it “dialer traffic.” These calls are automatically dialed and often start with a pre-recorded or…
ZipDX, leveraging the FCC’s STIR/SHAKEN call authentication mandate, has developed a new system designed to quickly detect suspect robocall activity and report details back to the signing provider. This platform, called RRAPTOR, gives telecommunications providers new opportunities to play an even larger role in solving the illegal robocall problem that has been plaguing all of us for more than a…
Earlier this month, USTelecom’s Industry Traceback Group, alongside the Communications Fraud Control Association, hosted a panel discussion featuring enforcers from the FCC, the FTC, and the Indiana and Vermont Attorney General’s offices. The video is here. Each of these agencies has brought actions against Voice Service Providers for facilitating illegal robocalling. Most, if not all, states have laws in which…
We’re hearing more about state Attorneys General going after illegal robocallers. In many cases, an AG starts with a complaint from a constituent located in their and follows that thread via traceback. But what if a state AG does not have specific traceback results for a call to their state. The AG might be aware of general complaints from residents…