Robocalls: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

robocalls Tydfil most annoying type of phone call with every other type of phone call robo calls are clearly infuriating every one of us has answered our phone at some point to hear this hi this is Josh from the customer service department can you hear me okay free medical alert system is a non-bailable arrest warrant issued under your name the reason of this call is to inform you that the IRS is filing lawsuits against you it was the pause in that last one that made it a real cliffhanger I mean you basically knew where it was going but there was a tantalizing chance that they were calling people to inform them that the IRS was filing lawsuit against Nicolas Cage which you're you assume is always true but call to confirm every now and then would be nice the point is everybody is annoyed by robo calls hatred of them might be the only thing that everyone in America agrees on now and if you've been feeling like you've been getting more of them recently you're actually right robo calls increased by 57% in 2018 to nearly 50 billion calls and it's understandably pissing people off the plague of robo calls is getting worse they're the number one consumer complaint to the Federal Communications Commission which receives more than 200,000 protests a year robo calls make up roughly 60% of all complaints to the FCC 60% of all complaints to the FCC are about robo calls so they are definitely aware of the problem it's like the actual tea salon in Vancouver called Netherland but at this point they definitely know they have a real issue the only question is what the are they going to do about it the nuisance of robo calls has gotten to the point where even local news reports about them get interrupted yeah we can't even get through an interview without an unwanted phone call I'm getting a robo call right now as we're talking as I was preparing this report I got one it is just not often that a news report gets interrupted by the subject of that report is your teenager getting involved in a strange new sex trend it's watermelon II and it involves god damn it can you not do this somewhere else so tonight tonight let's look at why robo calls are on the rise and what can be done about them and let's start with a basic definition robo calls are any call where you hear a recording or a robot voice or when a machine automatically dialed your number even if there is a real person on the other end and while a small percentage of robo calls may be useful cause about things like school closings or prescription reminders the vast majority of them vary from the irritating to the outright illegal and you might be surprised to know how many major companies are involved in this a list of top Robo callers includes Capital One Comcast and Wells Fargo all of whom use robo calls to chase debts and sometimes they do that a lot as this woman can testify librelucha wad never suspected one late mortgage payment would trigger what she considers an avalanche of harassment it came and I just blew me away lease attorney say they've logged more than six thousand calls from Wells Fargo to their client over the last four years some days such as in January lease says Wells Fargo rang her more than 20 times a day that's absolutely ridiculous because what is the point of calling someone 20 times a day to collect a debt oh this is actually great timing because while I couldn't pay you 45 minutes ago a small propeller plane full of um laundered drug money just crashed into my dam thanks so much for the call you ravenous ghouls but as you undoubtedly know it is not just major companies who do this phone calls are now so cheap and the technology is so widely available that just about anyone has the ability to place a massive number of calls you created a program here in your life yeah that's right you're gonna hit a button and right about now the calls should start hitting all at once this isn't saying they're all ringing yeah okay that's both very impressive and when you really think about it not actually that's impressive at all it's basically the phone electric from the world's least amusing birthday magician tada wait nothing well guess what the great laptop Dini got paid in advance so all of you and if you're thinking hold on what about the Do Not Call list well it still exists and very occasionally a big company like Dish Network will get fined millions for violating it the problem is though it only applies to one particular kind of call sales calls and the list doesn't physically block companies from calling you it's just something they're supposed to check before doing so and scammers generally ignore it first because they're scammers and second because it's now easy to conceal their identity with something called spoofing and I'll let senator Susan Collins show you how it works in the most Awkward possible way my screen is reading Internal Revenue Service well let's see hello this is Susan Collins may I ask who is calling hello chairman Collins this is Sam Dewey from your staff are you calling from the IRS no senator I'm actually over here [Applause] cool you know spoofing is actually the perfect technology for Susan Collins to be demonstrating just think about it it's all about temporarily pretending to be one thing and then disappointing everyone when you reveal who you actually are but but despite sounding like urban dictionary slang for when magician's shoot heroin spoofing is undeniably effective robot callers can pretend to be calling from your area increasing the chance that you will pick up and individual scammers can even pretend to be someone that you know as one reporter found out cybersecurity expert Jim Stickley sets up his phone to call my mom posing as me hey mom real quick I need your social security number I thought some beneficiary forms can you help me out real quick I've never there's beneficiary form I just need to fill it out what's your cell says kid number real fast great thanks a lot mom love you how's it I've got a social security number holy literally everything about that was upsetting from the fact that Jeff Rossen had someone scam his own mother to the fact that she fell for it to his amazing reaction when he realizes that his mother did something stupid do these bold choice to broadcast his own mother stupidity on national television to the fact that this man just took told another man's mother that he loves her too the revelation that he feeds Jeff Rossen sounds like a middle-aged man squeezing his own balls - the fact that Jeff Rossen could really use a new shirt the point is there's a lot happening in that clip and none of it is good also also a quick side note on that his mother's social security number wasn't bleeps to protect her identity it had to be centered because her social security number is - twat - taint juice ship tits it was no choice it wasn't her choice blame the Social Security Administration and thanks to all these new tactics the onslaught in scam phone calls is huge and it's only getting worse next year some estimates predict half of all mobile calls will be scam calls Wow and that is a real problem for consumers because you have to use your phone we can't go back to the days where everyone would just shout their message into a jar and then mail that jar across the country that was a terrible system and it was only marginally more accurate than having AT&T now oh you like that business daddy Johnny's acting up again Chinese acting up oh I've been I'm gonna get some spicy jars in the mail about that so the point is what can we do about this well on a personal level you can tell individual companies you do business with not to call you by law they're actually not allowed to robocall your cell without consent but that is where this gets tricky because those user agreements that you agreed to you know the ones that no one has ever read they often give companies consent to robocall you and can make revoking it incredibly difficult for instance if you're a customer of credit one bank and you want them to stop robocalling yourself just take out your User Agreement and turn to page four section 19 see where you'll find that you have to physically mail them written notice featuring your name mailing address and the last four digits of your account number two this P o box in Nevada and it makes total sense what you had opted not to do that I would rather receive a thousand phone calls a day every day for the rest of my life then go out and buy a stamp I mean would I even do that do I have to go to a post office or gonna just go to a Walgreens and if I can go to Walgreens is it all the Walgreens is or just some and if it's just some how do I find out which ones call literally call a place of business with my telephone and ask them if they could sell me a stamp okay then what I have to physically walk to the Walgreens literally physically walk like with my legs and wait in line and buy the stamp wat now put it in a mailbox what the am I gonna find that mailbox the only mailboxes I ever see are those we had boarded up green ones what's the are those things by the way they're spooky that's what they are it looks like a memorial of a pass mailbox that died in a war now I have to find the one mailbox in New York City that hasn't sacrificed its life in this country pry open its big hungry male mouth and shove a stamped envelope down its dusty throat none of that's gonna happen I'd rather die than engage in that nonsense and deep down I think you know that so so it is no wonder that some people choose to simply mess with robocallers as one journalist did when he noticed the person on the other end sounded a bit suspicious well I'm calling about an online request you once made about health insurance coverage okay with all major companies incomparable hey are you a robot what will you tell me you're not a robot just say I'm not a robot please I am a real person I mean I believe you but will you just say I'm not a robot it'll make me feel better to hear you say if you could say the words I'm not a robot it would really mean a lot to me I am a real person can you hear me okay right but will you say I'm not a robot [Laughter] [Applause] that man is dead now she killed him she stole his skin she walks among us and she'll kill again well as far as that is experts advise you not to engage with robocalls at all don't pick up and don't talk if you do answer because that lets them know that yours is a live number and you'll just get robo calls more but the much bigger point here is it should not entirely be up to us to deal with this the FCC has the authority to police robo calls and a few years back they actually put some guardrails in place with a set of rules designed to limit them as the FCC's former chair explained at the time they they basically followed a simple principle the consumer needs to be the one who's in charge the consumer needs to give consent that they want to be called or if they are called and haven't given consent to remove that consent by saying don't call me anymore or by calling their phone company and saying I don't want to get these calls and that sounds completely reasonable but unfortunately those rules were then struck down after a trade group sued at which point robo calls increased significantly so we made real progress toward addressing a problem but then we blew it we basically got our one year sobriety chip then celebrated by drinking a gallon of Captain Morgan which is not to say that there aren't things that the FCC could do unfortunately their current chair is this guy at G PI you've probably seen him on this show before alongside his stupid mark and by the way Cheers cheers for you pi says a lot of the right things about this he said that robo calls are the scourge of civilization and he's had a little too much fun showing how dedicated he is to tackling this issue to borrow from former President Kennedy let every robot caller know whether it wishes us well or ill and we shall pay any price bear any burden meet any hardship support any solution and oppose any but to assure the survival and the peace of American consumers it sounds like I may have just won a cruise if you'll excuse me I have to take the skull but thank you very much mr. chairman ladies and gentlemen that man is a goober and as you probably have aspirations for a high political office but I would argue that that's not gonna work out for him because Americans can have and will elect bastards morons blowhards crooks perverts dipshits con men scumbags and shitweasels but they will never ever elect a goober but while he talks a good game pie actually opposed those rules that we mentioned earlier and was extremely happy when they were overturned and since becoming FCC chair he has seemed too reluctant to force telecoms to act for instance he could require them to offer free call blocking services or implement something called call authentication which could significantly curtail spoofing but he hasn't done that instead what he's done is urge them to do it and while some say that they are working on it the fact is if he had required them to do it from the get-go we might actually have those fixes by now because telecom companies aren't really gonna listen to you unless you force them to and AT&T isn't going to listen to you at all unless you call them on t-mobile how will they hear otherwise their call would drop out that's right business tapping oh that's right you've inherited a problem child let's ask let's dance you and I but the thing experts are really worried that PI might do is bow to pressure from groups like telemarketers and banks and draft a new narrower definition of what constitutes autodialing it's technical but that would basically limit what would count as a robo call and if he does that it could have huge consequences so for instance if Wells Fargo called your cellphone 6,000 times you might no longer be able to sue them under anti Robo call laws and it is safe to assume that at that point robo calls are going to increase even more so if only there was a way to get the FCC's attention on this issue of course I mean what one way to do that would be if someone had I don't know say the office numbers of all five FCC commissioners because then you could hypothetically set up a program to robocall those numbers every 90 minutes with a message say I don't know like this high FCC this is John from customer service congratulations you've just won a chance to lower robo calls in America today sorry but I am a live person robo calls are incredibly annoying and the person who can stop them is you talk to you again in 90 minutes is a bagpipe music that would be really annoying right to get that every 90 minutes it would really drive the point home and nope I guess at this point it's probably obvious what is about to happen here yes FCC we meet again old friends except this time unlike our past encounters I don't actually need to ask hoards of real people to bombard you with messages because with the miracle of Robo calling I can now do it all by myself you see it turns out Robo calling is so easy it only took our tech guy literally 15 minutes to work out how to do it so when I press this button will it trigger our robo calls to the FCC no no that that would be too simple instead behold what instead when my finger presses this button it will trigger this much larger finger that will press a much larger button which will trigger our calls to the FCC so FCC you know what you need to do and by the way if you wanted to if you want to tell us that you don't consent to be Robo called that's absolutely no problem just write a certified letter to the address that we've buried somewhere within the first chapter of Moby Dick that's currently scrolling up the screen you've got that right you got it find the address write us a letter and we'll stop the calls immediately and if you're thinking that there should be a simpler way to opt out well no okay there's simply no point delaying this any longer here goes unleash hell it's raining for you that's our show Oh [Applause]

Channel: LastWeekTonight

Views: 7,829,354

Rating: 4.9087315 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: FO0iG_P0P6M

Length: 17min 45sec (1065 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 10 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

I didn't realize robocalls sounded so realistic. Probably talked to a robot before without realizing it. I usually answer the phone if it's on to see who it is and hang up if they are trying to sell me something. I'll have remember that next time to ask if it's a robot.

[u/TonyTheTankEngine]

Where was the chapter of Moby Dick that was supposed to be scrolling along the screen?

[u/susheelr]

Seeing John call AT&T business daddy was unnervingly erotic .

[u/JoeBenigo]

The most gangster shit he could have done is release the code to robocall the FCC on Github. That would take his getting on the FCC’s nerves to a new level.

[u/teamchuckles]

I'm so annoyed with robocalls that I just set my phone so that any number that calls me that isn't on my contacts just don't ring and they can leave a voicemail. It kinda sucks but at least I don't get those calls 4 or 5 times a day.

[u/VagrantShadow]

I hate robocalls with a passion. Each week I get at least two robocalls from real people addressing my urgent need for new auto insurance. They tell me they have me in the records that my auto insurance isn't up to snuff.

The few times that I answered I had to quickly tell them that I lack a motor vehicle and that I don't even have a drivers license. I tell them about the car crash I was in when I was a teen that left me with drivers anxiety and driving ptsd. They always hang up in an instant. At this point if I don't know the number I wont even pick up.

[u/TheSeattleWeeaboo]

That ending was spectacular. Still didn't beat the AT&T jokes though. John gives no fucks and I love it.

[u/Spocks_Goatee]

The Red Cross is absolute worst, I don't want to donate fucking blood every day!

[u/Bonerbeef]

(Laughs)