Star *55 Instant Complaint

Robocall Challenge

Entry by Craig Wilson, Fairfield, CA (picture at end of this PDF document; entry is self-contained)

Name: “Star *55 Instant Complaint”

Description: The best way to solve this is to 1.) empower consumers to instantly complain with just a press of their finger, 2.) centralize the recording of complaints through telephone company computers, and 3.) make the complaints quickly public on the internet.

Here is the solution, step by step.

First, require all telephone companies (all, that is, with switches capable of this) to program in a new key sequence, similar to the old "star 69" (last call return). After any suspected illegal robocall, the user can instantly complain by pressing, for instance, ‘*55’ and a recording would verify, “Your complaint has been registered that the previous call was an unwanted recorded business call. If you did not intend to complain, press star 66 and hang up. Otherwise, just hang up.”

This leads to the next step - the automated consequences. After an initial study and calibration period, the FTC (or its designated contractor) would set initial thresholds of complaint activation. Here's what I mean.

For instance, if the threshold is 10 complaints in a 10 minute window per phone number, then that phone line would go inactive for, say, 10 minutes. A dial tone would be present (in order to dial 911, for instance), but any other attempts to dial out would result in a message such as, “This line is inactive because of complaints received about unwanted recorded business calls. Please try your call again later.” (Alternative: If phone companies have clear differentiation between residential and non-residential accounts, apply this solution to non-residential accounts only. If robocall problem migrates to residential phone accounts, then migrate this solution.)

These thresholds would be tweaked as the data are evaluated.

Institutions that are legally permitted to make robocalls, such as political parties, charities and health care providers, could register their phone number with an office of their state government. All phone companies would be required to update their 'star 55' filters through this list daily.

Transparency: All instant complaints via this process will be logged with time and date stamp (only the number called from) and made available for public inspection on the internet. It must be reported (in daily batches?) by telephone companies to the FTC, which would then post the information on the internet. The value of this is to two-fold: to gain the public’s confidence that their complaints are at least being noted (and not “disappearing into the ether”), and to give citizen advocacy groups a tool to initiate enforcement actions against robocallers where public funds for this effort fall short. (Alternatives to posting all complained-of phone numbers: All complaints that number greater than 3, or all that number greater than 5 in 5 minutes, or all that result in inactivation, etc.)

What about friends calling on a phone tree, or a school club calling down a list to spread the word about a bake sale? This is a potential snare but a highly unlikely one. Even if a mischievous recipient of a call about the bake sale decided to report it as an unwanted robocall, it's not going to go over the threshold unless there are significant numbers of such complaints. In any case, the phone number automatically goes active again after the preset number of minutes. Minutes to reset can be learned at any time by dialing, say, *44.

In any case, the initial study and calibration period would count how many complaints came from residential phone numbers and how many came from various commercial phone numbers, in order to set initial thresholds. (There might even be different thresholds set for residential numbers than non-residential, but not necessarily - this might foil teenage pranksters.)

Disadvantages: -Would not block all robocalls -Could not distinguish robocalls from serial human callers -Presumably minor phone carriers in rural areas with old phone switches do not support this function. - i.e. - not available to small fraction of country. -Might could be spoofed, VoIP most vulnerable (per Wikipedia, "Caller_ID_spoofing"), although less so as technology and laws advance.

Advantages: -Will allow all calls from properly registered legal robocall groups such as political parties, charities, health care providers, and reverse 911 calls. -All consumer phones can be protected, includes mobile phones, traditional wired phones, and VoIP land lines. (Not sure about rotary dial phones. Depends on carrier?) -Major carriers already support this mechanism. Evidence: Star functions. -Easy to learn to use; experience with *69 taught that. Word of mouth! Plus, all the consumer mags will do the explaining work for you. -Efficiency is 100% - cost is near zero. -How satisfying would it be to use this solution? It would feel soooo good! It would feel like a zapper! Plus you could verify your complaint the next day on the internet. -It would definitely be accessible to people with disabilities. -Completely automated for all involved. No maintenance needed, no intervention required. Everything resets by itself. The only work is periodic and statistical, to tweak the algorithms.

-The rollout should be phased out by sub-region concurrent with the initial study and calibration period. Then, if it polls well in a sub-region, scale it up to a region. If it does well there, expand it.

The big picture: The illegal robocallers thrive among 3 conditions: low-cost autodialers and phone lines, near-anonymous phone numbers, and a near-absence of complaints. This solution would take away two of those three conditions, with little collateral damage. It would force them to disclose what phone numbers they are using (posted to the internet) and it would force them to obtain many more phone lines if they wanted to maintain the rate of calls made.

Bigger picture: It's not just the illegal robocallers. When you start collecting complaints about unwanted calls, you'll uncover a much larger picture of intrusions. Collecting this data is a step forward in refining what we want to do with our public switched telephone network – a huge step, in terms of user feedback. (Some of my friends think the Do Not Call registry is completely ineffective but feel powerless.)

Summary: The three steps are easy complaints, centralized reporting, and transparent results. People won't have faith in a system that feels hidden, anonymous or unreasonably delayed. It's 2012. We want more information, control and accountability. Give the data to the wisdom of crowds and see what starts to happen. It will hasten the beginning of the end of the tele-robo-spammers.