question: What exactly are robocalls? Why are they on a surge right now? And why isn’t anything being done to prevent them?
comment: Technology has made it inexpensive to build massive call centers in countries that made it difficult to stop with legal actions. The US telecoms are terrible. They have no incentive to provide a good customer experience, so they don't use technology that easily blocks numbers that are masked.
passages: A number of physical products have been developed for use with landlines. These are typically installed in homes and employ a hard coded or irregularly updated blacklist. Some models also have the function to create a user-generated whitelist. Newer devices for landlines can use cloud based data to resolve the hard coded blacklist issues and allow you to create your own whitelist/blacklist.
  
  Section::::Suppressing unwanted and illegal robocalls.:Crowdsourcing.
   In August 2016, a "Robocall Strike Force" of thirty companies said they would help crack down on the problem.
  
  Section::::Enforcement.:2015 Federal Communications Commission Declaratory Rulings.
  
  After receiving more than 215,000 consumer complaints in 2014 alone, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) strengthened and clarified its regulations protecting consumers from unwanted robocalls and spam emails and texts. The Commission issued a package of declaratory rulings in June 2015 that clarified the provisions of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) that deal with prerecorded and artificial voice calls received by residential wireline phones as well as wireless numbers.
   Solutions are available as both hardware and software products. Mobile apps are especially prevalent as they use techniques which do not require the modification of infrastructure. Many products are limited to use only on a single medium, such as traditional copper landlines, or mobile phone contracts from a specific mobile phone operator.
  
  Section::::Suppressing unwanted and illegal robocalls.:Blacklisting and whitelisting.
  
  In its simplest form, this method offers the ability to prevent further calls from phone numbers, once they are known to be a source of robocalls. Many mobile apps can prevent robocalls with a user generated blacklist.
   In 2016, both Verizon and Sprint each launched their own service based on Enhanced Caller ID, which is developed by Cequint and incorporates whitelisting, blacklisting and crowdsourcing techniques. For improved accuracy, it is complemented by a technology called Call Guardian developed by TNS, which performs caller behavior analysis on the 25 billion public calls they handle every year in real time.
  
  Starting in mid-2017, and with intended culmination in 2019, the FCC pushed forward Caller ID certification implemented via a methodology of SHAKEN/STIR.
  
  Section::::Enforcement.
   On September 1, 2009, a new regulation of the Federal Trade Commission went into effect, banning most robocalls without written opt-in from the receiver. Political campaigns, surveys, charities, debt collectors, and health care providers are exempt, as are calls to businesses. Calls from banks, insurers, and phone companies are out of the jurisdiction of the FTC. In situations under federal jurisdiction, the federal law will supersede a slightly less restrictive law in the state of California.
  
  Section::::Reverse robocalling.
   Section::::North America.:United States.:Indiana.
  
  Indiana requires introduction of any prerecorded message by a live operator; the message may only be played if the called party grants permission.
  
  Section::::North America.:United States.:Missouri.
  
  In September 2008, then-Missouri Attorney General Jay Nixon alerted political campaigns in Missouri that his office would aggressively enforce federal rules (Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991) requiring calls to include identifying and contact information.
  
  Section::::North America.:United States.:North Carolina.
   Shaun Dakin, CEO of Citizens for Civil Discourse, testified at the hearing and described how robocalls affect the lives of voters across the nation. He also wrote an op-ed for the "Washington Post" calling for a Voter Privacy Bill of Rights in which all voters would have the right to opt out of political robocalls if they did not wish to receive them.
   A more sophisticated model uses crowdsourcing to build a more comprehensive blacklist of robocall numbers. A notable example of this is the app Truecaller, which requires users to provide access to their personal whitelist of genuine contacts in exchange for access to the larger crowdsourced database. In 2013, hackers gained access to Truecaller's database of known genuine numbers, highlighting the danger of centralising this information.
  
  Section::::Suppressing unwanted and illegal robocalls.:CAPTCHA.
  
  Building on the crowdsourcing model, Primus Canada launched a patented product called Telemarketing Guard for landlines in 2007. It improves on previous models by including a CAPTCHA style challenge-response test.
   Section::::North America.:United States.
  
  Section::::North America.:United States.:Political calls.
  
  Robocalls are made by many political parties in the United States, including but not limited to both the Republican and Democratic parties as well as unaffiliated campaigns, 527 organizations, unions, and individual citizens. Political robocalls are exempt from the United States National Do Not Call Registry. The Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 (TCPA) and Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulations prohibit anyone (including charities, politicians and political parties) from making robocalls to cell phone numbers without the recipients' prior consent. The FCC permits non-commercial robocalls to most residential (non-cellular) telephone lines.
   Section::::North America.:United States.:Proposed additional regulations.
   In December 2010, the Truth in Caller ID Act was signed into United States law, making it illegal "to cause any caller identification service to knowingly transmit misleading or inaccurate caller identification information with the intent to defraud, cause harm, or wrongfully obtain anything of value."
  
  Section::::See also.
  
  BULLET::::- Mobile security
  
  BULLET::::- Operation Weeting
  
  BULLET::::- Phreaking
  
  BULLET::::- Telephone tapping
  
  BULLET::::- Vault 7
  
  Section::::External links.
  
  BULLET::::- US Today Has someone hacked your webcam, March 2 2018
  
  BULLET::::- Cell Hack 5.0 app in spanish for hacking,
  
  BULLET::::- Timeline: News of the World phone-hacking row, "BBC News", 5 July 2011
   Despite heavy media publicity of the database, only seven politicians in the United States voluntarily pledged to respect the list during the 2008 general election cycle. Of those seven, only three made it to the general election and only Virginia Foxx (R) was successfully reelected in November 2008.
   Until these goals are achieved, a more advanced method for blocking robocalls uses real-time business intelligence techniques to address the constantly changing identities of robocalls. With access to a large enough data sample, it is possible to create algorithms which detect call patterns without requiring reporting by users.
   On December 19, 2018, the CRTC announced that beginning December 19, 2019, phone providers must block all calls with IDs that "[purport] to originate from telephone numbers that do not conform to established numbering plans".
  
  Section::::Legal considerations.:India.
  
  According to a report from the India Department of Telecommunications, the government of India has taken the following steps against the CLI spoofing service providers:
  
  BULLET::::- Websites offering caller ID spoofing services are blocked in India as an immediate measure.
   In November 2011, the investigator served RackNine with a production order for records and had the account holder associated with the bogus calls quickly identified. Investigators have also examined the Conservative Party's CIMS voter database and showed that "Pierre Poutine" used the Conservative voter database to select who to call. Investigators have blank entries for one specific login, leading to speculation that evidence has been deleted. PayPal has also surrendered their records to investigators since "Pierre Poutine" has used a PayPal account to pay for the bill for the automated calls. The cost for these May 2, 2011, calls was $162.10, Elections Canada said in court filings. This expenditure was never reported to Elections Canada, as required for legitimate political spending.
   Some states (23 according to DMNews) have laws that regulate or prohibit political robocalls. Indiana and North Dakota prohibit automated political calls. In New Hampshire, political robocalls are allowed, except when the recipient is in the National Do Not Call Registry. Many states require the disclosure of who paid for the call, often requiring such notice be recorded in the candidate's own voice. The patch-work of state laws regulating political robocalls has created problems for national campaigns.
  
  Section::::North America.:United States.:California.
   Section::::Process.
   Section::::RoboCup.
   For landlines there are standalone call blockers which connect to the telephone. Various models work on blacklisting and whitelisting principles. Call blockers received attention from publications including Which? and Consumer Reports in the United Kingdom and United States respectively.
  
  In the UK BT operates a service for landlines called Choose to Refuse which allows customers to block up to 10 phone numbers of their choice for a monthly fee.
   After a lengthy investigation of the circumstances of the scandal, Michael Sona, the former director of communications for the Conservative candidate in the Guelph (Ontario) riding was charged on June 2, 2014 with "wilfully preventing or endeavouring to prevent an elector from voting". Sona was found guilty on November 14, 2014 and was sentenced to nine months in jail plus twelve months of probation. Sona was released from jail on bail after serving twelve days, pending his appeal of the sentence. However, Sona did not appeal the conviction. During the trial, Justice Hearn agreed with the Crown allegation that Sona had likely not acted alone.
   A major problem for the use of both blacklisting and whitelisting techniques is the practice of caller ID spoofing, which is prevalent as a result of the low barrier to entry in the VoIP services market.
  
  In 2015 the Federal Communications Commission proposed a framework for the telecommunications industry in the United States, which included a validation system at network level for robocalls from SIP sources by 2017. The final authentication task in the framework is the signing of all VoIP calls, which would allow carriers to reliably identify robocalls.
   Season 2 began on December 26, 2011 (with "Rody is a liar"), and ended on May 15, 2012 (with "Harmony of Brooms Town (part 2)"). It contains 26 episodes.
  
  Section::::Episodes.:Season 3 (2014).
  
  Season 3 began on February 26 (with "Brooms Town's Visitor"), and ended on May 22, 2014 (with "Amber's Training"). It contains 26 episodes.
  
  Section::::Episodes.:Season 4 (2015).
  
  Season 4 began on August 31 (with "A Suspicious Friend"), and ended on November 24, 2015 (with "Our Fabulous New Friend"). It contains 26 episodes.
   In December 2011 reporting described "robocall revenge" where voters can turn the table and send robocalls to politicians and others using online website tools.
  
  Section::::Suppressing unwanted and illegal robocalls.
   Caller ID spoofing remains legal in Canada, and has recently become so prevalent that the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre has "add[ed] an automated message about [the practice] to their fraud-reporting hotline". The CRTC estimates that 40% of the complaints they receive regarding unsolicited calls involve spoofing. The agency advises Canadians to file complaints regarding such calls, provides a list of protection options for dealing with them on its website, and, from July through December 2015, held a public consultation to identify "technical solutions" to address the issue. Regulators have set a March 31, 2019 target date for implementation of a CID authentication system.
   In New Hampshire, the state attorney general's office requested that the NRCC end the robocalls, but many individuals in the state continued to report receiving them. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee sent the NRCC a cease-and-desist letter. The DCCC letter cited the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulation requiring that a prerecorded telephone call must identify the responsible entity at the beginning of the message, and must include the entity's telephone number. Because the NRCC's calls did not name the NRCC at the beginning and did not provide a contact phone number, the DCCC charged the NRCC with "a pattern of willful noncompliance with FCC requirements".
  