The notion that robocalling—those annoying, machine-driven calls that won't respond to your cries of “I'm on the do not call list!” or even piteous sobbing—could be reduced to essentially one single hive-mind is horrifying, the stuff that bad science fiction is made of. A new report from Pindrop shows that this is closer to the case than anyone might have expected, as over half of all robocalls come from one of just 38 sources.
The Pindrop study, detailed at the Black Hat USA 2016 show, revealed that over half of a measured 100,000 robocalls could be traced back to just 38 sources. A combination of Pindrop's “phoneprinting” system and a technology known as a “telephony honeypot” came together to allow Pindrop to backtrace the incoming calls and discover the shocking commonality beneath.
Under normal circumstances, reports note, it's easy enough for robocallers to spoof a phone number and work around caller ID that way, but a phoneprint works in a much different way. Not only does it use phone numbers, but it also uses various call audio features, calling patterns and even “call semantics” to establish a caller's place of origin. Combine that with some new machine learning systems and the end result is the ability to track and classify incoming calls much more closely than has been seen yet.
Some might wonder here what good this does, a point answered handily by Pindrop CEO Vijay Balasubramaniyan, who said “Knowing that the bulk of calls come from a small number of telephony infrastructures will allow telcos and law enforcement to get one step closer to eliminating telephony fraud. This is the first time anyone has been able to deliver insights like this with confidence. We believe this is a major step in protecting consumers from fraud and identity theft.”
The more we know about robocalls, the more steps we can engage in to stop them. Knowing the general location a call is emerging from means that countermeasures can be programmed to provide extra scrutiny to calls emerging from those origin points. While the robocall users can adjust tactics to call from different origin points, that's likely to be an expensive move. One of robocalling's biggest advantages is the ability to contact a lot of people for very low cost, and if the costs go up, then the point of robocalling is at least partially lost.
We may be looking at a new era, where we can finally pin down robocalls in advance and shut at least most of these down for good. Granted, some robocalls are good, like the ones parents get from schools about closures and the like. Many are not, and these are the calls that make our lives that much more miserable. Pindrop's research may be all we need to take back the dinner hour for good.
Edited by Alicia Young