Article URL: https://broadbandbreakfast.com/how-to-fight-back-against-fraudulent-robocalls/ Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49122882 Points: 4 # Comments: 0

Panelists warned that anti-fraud tools can't keep pace with scammers exploiting cheap internet calling and AI. WASHINGTON, July 29, 2026 — The tools to fight phishing, robocalls and spam have multiplied over the past decade, but the criminals behind them keep adapting faster than any single defense can keep up, industry experts said Wednesday during a Broadband Breakfast Live Online panel. Panelists said that there were no simple answers to the knot of problems. Authentication frameworks, traceback efforts, call blocking and enforcement all help, but only together, and only if consumers stay vigilant as scammers exploit cheap Internet-based calling and now artificial intelligence. Learn about the 3-Part Preview of America250 / Telecom150, a Broadband Breakfast conference on October 1, 2026 Learn about "Broadband and AI in the Next Congress" at the National Press Club on December 1, 2026 The rise of internet calling is what created both problems in the first place, according to Josh Bercu, executive director of the Industry Traceback Group at the trade association USTelecom. "It's become cheap and easy for you and me to call anyone around the country and around the world," he said. "Well, guess what? It's also cheap and easy for the bad guys to blow up our phones, call us from anywhere in the world." That shift eliminated the old physical trust of wired networks. "If I'm providing service to the bank, I know they're the bank. I'm literally laying wire to the bank," Bercu said. "That all changed with the advent of internet calling platforms where I can say I'm a bank, and I might not be a bank." Much of the conversation centered on STIR/SHAKEN (Secure Telephone Identity Revisited and Signature-based Handling of Asserted Information Using toKENs), the call authentication protocol that both experts said was oversold. "Starshaken was never meant to be a silver bullet," said Joel Bernstein, vice president and head of U.S. public policy and government affairs at Somos. "This is a way we get to some level of understanding, and it's only in conjunction with other things."