what does anonymous call blocking actually block?

[fastKitty]

Just got my latest non blocked or marked spam? call of the day on my fios landline and this one was marked "Name Unavailabl" on caller ID.   Of course it was a robocall but anonymous call block didn't block it.

What does that feature ACTUALLY block?   For a while I thought it actually did something but now I have my doubts as the number of "Name Unavailabl"'s is ticking up every day.     I hardly ever see the SPAM? marking anymore and my landline is becoming more of an annoyance than anything these days.

[fastKitty]

As a followup, yesterday I got 16 spoofed robocalls and only one was marked as SPAM? by Verizon.    It's also the only one nomorobo also caught.   This in spite of having every call blocking service that they provide turned on.    8 of them occurred between the dinner hour of 6:05 to 6:48.  As of 11:30 today, I have already gotten 4.   The third one prompted me to call Verizon support to complain and my call got escalated to a supervisor.

I explained that it's clear that they don't block robocalls and can't be validating the callerID like the "stir/shaken" law was supposed to do (and that VZ advertises that they have implemented).  They also aren't blocking invalid (illegal) phone numbers that you don't need any callerID to know are invalid and numbers that are not in service.   

She basically said "we try our best" and suggested I use the call blocking list.   I told her if they gave me a list of 1000, I would fill it up as the numbers change every day and I would have to tolerate the 1000 calls coming through the first time.

She said my only recourse is to file a complaint with the FCC which I will be doing shortly.  So if you are going through the same aggrevation for a service that you are actually paying for, I suggest you just start with filing the FCC complaint as it doesn't sound like a complaint to support will accomplish anything.

[dexman]

As an example, if you add *67 to the start of your telephone number, the call will be sent to a recording directing you to unblock your telephone number in order to let the call complete.

Spam calls are not anonymous calls per-se' because there is a telephone number associated with the call.

It is difficult to properly block spam calls because telemarketers can spoof working telephone numbers. Imagine if your landline is spoofed by a boiler-room outfit to blanket-call people. Your telephone number could be labeled "Spam" which would pose all sorts of problems.  🙁

[fastKitty]

I fully understand you can block your number from being sent.

But I just now got a call that displayed NO phone number and the name part said "PRIVATE CALLER".    Not sure how much more anonymous it could be than not showing me a phone number or a name, but that call rang on my phone in spite of my having anonymous call block turned on.

So the only thing I can assume is that "anonymous call block" just doesn't work.

[dexman]

Verizon used to offer an optional service called "Call Intercept".

If a caller's Caller ID did not contain valid information, the caller would be forced to verbally identify themselves. Then the recording would be forwarded to the called party for review. That person would have the option to accept or reject the call.

I used to subscribe to it. Sadly, when I upgraded my FiOS service a few months ago, I had to drop it when Verizon ported my telephone number out of their legacy 5E switch and into their packet switch. ☹

[fastKitty]

Call Intercept sounds pretty much what google voice does.  And can't remember the last time I got a robocall on my google voice number.

And not sure what VZ just did but now I'm getting a LOT of single ring calls.  No, not the nomorobo single ring ones, those displayed the number on the CID and I could go to their site and see if the number was blocked.   These are so quick that they ring once but abort so quickly that nothing appears on CID.  I can go into in my fios call management and see them there.  All show as "missed calls" and all have a name and a number associated with them so are not anonymous calls.   I plugged a few in at nomorobo and none were on their block list.  And they aren't on my personal block list either.    I've gotten at least 4 today so way too much of a coincidence that that many robocallers are suddenly aborting calls for essentially no reason--and too fast for them to know if the number is even active.   At least 3 displayed town names, one displayed a financial services company name in fios call management.

Have no idea what's going on now.   If this is VZ doing something, it would be better if they didn't even ring the call if it was a known spoof. 

[dexman]

Those short rings could be originating from the same sender. The originating party could be utilizing an auto dialer. Without some digging, it's all pure conjecture on my part though. 🤔

[fastKitty]

I just got another phone call on a number not in service that I've previously reported to them on their reporting form https://voicespamfeedback.com/vsf/

I mean how hard is it for them to verify a number isn't in service and thus should be blocked if a call comes in on it?????  But clearly they don't even do that.

So besides them not blocking anonymous calls, not blocking spoofed calls like the stir/shaken law was supposed to stop (and that they advertise that they've implemented), they also don't even apparently look at numbers reported to them as being spoofs and not even in service.

Personally I don't think they've actually done ANYTHING to block robocalls. 

[dexman]

Now that I think about it, about a year or two ago I ran into a situation where, despite my having Call Intercept on my land line, I would see occasional calls ring in with "UNAVAILABLE" showing up for both name & number.

I opened a ticket with Verizon Repair. After a day or two, Verizon was able to find the call record.

What the company discovered is that the calling party was sending an originating telephone number that had the incorrect number of digits. (I think the caller was adding one extra digit).

This caused Verizon's system to send the calls along with no Caller ID info attached. There was nothing Verizon could do to stop such calls from passing through.

Eventually the calls stopped and everything returned to "normal".

[fastKitty]

It really is just pathetic how bad Verizon call blocking is and every day I find something new that amazes me how bad it is.   Seems like people actually even taunt them to try to block a call or something.

Just now I got a robot voice caller trying to sell some kind of auto insurance.   The CID was spoofed to display "NOT IN SERVICE" and sure enough, the number isn't even in service.   Seems like they were daring them to block the call but they didn't.

It's equally horrible that VZ doesn't seem to reach out to anyone with issues like this.   I can be happy I rarely get spam calls on my t-mobile cell phone because if their cell phone spam blocking is as bad as their voip service, I'd be off of it in a day.

[fastKitty]

so as a continuing update, I reported Verizon's apparently lack of actually implementing Stir/Shaken based on everything I've seen to my state for investigation because the phone annoyance has continued relentlessly.   They got in contact with Verizon and someone from Verizon Wireless contacted me via email.   When he found out that this was a FIOS account, he basically said he couldn't help me.   He claimed he would send this to someone from the FIOS division and they would contact me within a few business days.  It has now been close to 2 weeks since then.

I have since recontacted the state mentioning that they need to specifically reach out to the FIOS side of the company since they are so singly focused that they don't seem to deal with anything not in their specfic bucket OR from a consumer complaint to their customer service.

It's a shame because I just got a bogus call (they aren't in my service area and of course a spoofed number not blocked by Verizon) because otherwise it would have been tempting to just leave.

[fastKitty]

In my continuing frustration with Verizon doing nothing about robocalls I've since been told by various people at Verizon:

1. https://voicespamfeedback.com/vsf/ is only looked at if you get a number marked SPAM? that really is not spam.    This in spite of a radio button to select to report a spam call that isn't spam.  Someone later disputed this so have gotten contradictory advice.
2. The proper place for reporting spam calls is by sending email to: verizon.robocall@verizon.com    I give them the time, number, caller ID display value, and anything else I know about the call.   Not sure what they really want as they haven't asked for more information.   You will get a response that generally will say "we have passed the issue to our upstream provider and they will have it resolved in 24-48 hours".      I've yet to see what good it really does because I have since gotten repeated calls on the same number after reporting to this email (and the website).    I've also reported LIVE valid numbers that really don't appear to have been spoofed by robocallers and have yet to see them take one of those numbers down either by calling them later.
3. The people monitoring the email say that sending it there has no control over a number getting marked SPAM? on the link and that's the purpose of the people at the website link.  But as I noted,  oher people responding at the same email address have also said that site isn't for doing that.  So who can you believe?    In any case, I've yet to see the website cause any spam to get marked spam ever given I've gotten repeated calls from numbers I've reported.  And even if nomorobo catches it, that has no impact on them adding SPAM? to it.
4. VZ not only doesn't seem to really validate that a call is legitimate, but they also don't even appear to validate that a phone number is legal.   I've gotten calls from area codes that don't even exist and calls from phone numbers that are just illegal (like the number after the area code can't have specific values) but they happily pass those calls through.
5. The anonymous call blocking setting (to answer my own question), doen't appear to do anything.  I gave the spam blocking email people an example of call that came through with no phone number and no contact information as both reported on my phone AND in the calling history on the website and they could not give me any reason how it possibly got through.

I've now given the phone blocking email people over 275! spam call details (time/number/display value) that reached my number in the less than the last 6 weeks.   All I've ever really heard are excuses that the are passing it up to the upstream provider.   How they know who the upstream provider is without also blocking them is beyond me and they won't tell me.  In any case, it seems to do no good.

[dexman]

I once provided some details about calls marked "Unavailable" were getting past the Call Intercept system.

Verizon discovered that the calls were being received from overseas and contained the wrong number of digits for the calling telephone number. The system didn't know what to do with the extra digit, so, it just passed the call along as Unknown.

[fastKitty]

Besides everything else, I now feel that sending email or posting to:

verizon.robocall@verizon.com  

https://voicespamfeedback.com/vsf/

does absolutely no good.  They don't seem to care.   I've given them SEVERAL blocks of 100 numbers that are all used by the same robocaller.  They are the same caller because I've selectively called 20+ numbers in each block and you get the same exact recording.  The CID information for them is the same when they call.  When I gave the people at the above email address the phone number blocks with the details on them, and the call information for the call in the blocks that I got, all I still got was the "we are passing this to our upstream provider".  Days later I get another call from another number in the same block.   Nothing gets blocked.  They don't seem to care.

Today I got a robocall from the same exact number I previous reported to this email address--not even another number in the same block, the same exact number.    So the "we are passing to upstream provider" did no good, VZ didn't block it from happening again and whoever this upstream provider is didn't do anything.   And the number isn't even valid so not sure why they let it through but they still do even after I reported it. 

I have no idea why if they can figure out who the upstream provider is, that they can't block spoofs.  They do "claim" they have implemented Stir/Shaken but I see no evidence of that.

As for the web URL for marking spam, they are equally useless.  Those same calls are not marked SPAM?    I've now reported 410 bogus spam calls to the email address and also reported them to the web URL for SPAM? marking (I've been doing the web url much longer but have no idea how many I've sent to them).     Out of all my "recent" 410 reported calls, I've gotten exactly 3 marked as SPAM?      48 of these are on nomorobo's block list so even they don't do that great a job but gobs better than Verizon seems to do.

[fastKitty]

Yesterday I exceded the 500 mark for calls reported to the verizon robocall email reporting system since October.  So over 500 in less than 3.5 months.   Unbelievable they do nothing about their problems.

Today I got a robocall from 467-003-xxxx 

How they let that one through is beyond me.   003 is illegal for those character positions and 467 isn't even a valid area code.   It's such a bogus number in so many ways.

And they CLAIM they validate callerID?   impossible....   They lie in their marketing and they lied to the FCC about implementing stir/shaken.

[dexman]

The problem of telemarketers (both domestic and international) affects more than Verizon.

I have local friends that have landline service through Comcast and RCN. They, too, have problems with spam calls.

For some, the answer is to drop landline service altogether and use a mobile phone for telephone calls.

The problem there is that telemarketers call mobile phone numbers as well. Blocking numbers at the device level only pushes them straight to voice-mail and the user still receives new message notifications.

The government is reportedly going to push gateway providers to take responsibility for screening incoming traffic.

But this problem is not limited to Verizon. It is an industry-wide byproduct of VoIP technology.

[fastKitty]

But Verizon claims they validate callerID.  They clearly do NOT.   It's one thing to get spam calls, another to get them on invalid not in service numbers when Verizon claims they validate that the callerID is accurate.

Today I hit a new low.   I previously had reported a number which has an INVALID area code and an INVALID exchange on their spam reporting website: https://voicespamfeedback.com/vsf/

Today I got another call from the SAME number and when I tried to report it, the website said "invalid number".   It didn't get marked SPAM? and it didn't even get blocked.   So Verizon website deverlopers know it's an invalid number but their network engineers are doing NOTHING about blocking it or even marking it SPAM.

It's a prime example that spam might be an industry wide problem but also that Verizon is doing nothing about it except making false claims that they are.

[dexman]

Verizon is beginning to verify telephone numbers. Within the past few days, I've received two telephone calls from numbers that had "[v]" in front of the name.  That symbol means that the caller is verified. Spoofed calls are still arriving, but they lack that symbol as a part of the call record.

[fastKitty]

Last week I got another anonymous call, no user information, no phone number.   I asked the robo call people what's going on.  Their answer "we don't know, you have to ask customer support".

So today when I got yet another, I got on the support chat.   They veriifed, I'm assuming, that everything I said was correct and told me "turn anonymous block off and then back on."   I told them I've done that many a time before but I'll humor you and do it yet again.  So after I did that, I asked them if they could send me an anonymous call to test it.  "no, we can't do that".   So I told them, you had me do something that you have no clue as to whether it would even help or could test????

I'm guessing this is how verizon gets people off support calls.   I did tell them to put our chat into my customer records so next week when I get back on support when it happens AGAIN, that they won't tell me once again to do silly things that won't do any good, and even if it did would indicate they have other problems anyway.

[fastKitty]

It's hard to believe I can ever reach new lows with Verizon's futility and lack of caring about their own customers but today was probably close.

I got 9 robocalls calls today, Friday is usually low, but it wasn't necessarily the number but who they are from.   I've repeatedly reported to Verizon that most of these calls are originating from two peering networks Peerless Network and Peering Hub.   Today I got 3 from each.  And Verzion knows they are sending sc*m calls onto their network and are doing NOTHING to block them.

I've now provided Verizon with details of 21 of such calls this month alone coming from Peering Hub and 11 this year from Peerless Network and they've done nothing to block them, nothing to prevent their calls from annoying their customers.    They are "almost" as much as fault as the crooks behind such calls for doing nothing to protect their customers at this point when they clearly know these networks are a problem.

[fastKitty]

Received two more anonymous calls last week.  No phone number, unknown name--as displayed both on my phone and via the web app.    Complained to verizon support for at least the third time now.   

The first time they told me to go to web and unclick and reclick "anonymous call block".  Of course that did no good.

The second time, some "technician" claimed he was doing the equivalent of checking and unchecking" the box and then had to listen to a sales pitch which he claimed will save me money.  Not sure where he game up with that as the price he quoted was MORE than my current bill.  Anyway, whatever he did, didn't solve the problem given I had to complain again...

This time they claim they actually are going to escalate it.   That was now over a week ago and I've heard nothing.  So am sure Verizon again will do nothing.

I also had identified a "company" that was hiring out robocallers that were apparently (per Verizon) spoof calls.   Only the phone number displayed was always one of many owned by this "company" given the message when you called them (always the same and the robocaller always spoofed the number to one belonging to this same "company".   Did Verizon do anything about this?  Nope.   They claimed they could only apparently go after the robocalling service and NOT the company hiring the robocaller.  Unbelievable.