Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: and how the tech are you? My tech is going
Speaker 1: bananas today. I've been having some issues with the computer
Speaker 1: I used to record episodes, and a little bit of
Speaker 1: issues with my recording equipment, so I've swapped some stuff
Speaker 1: out so that I can quickly do this because I
Speaker 1: need to troubleshoot for the rest of the day. Fix
Speaker 1: fix this so I can keep getting episodes out. But
Speaker 1: I don't want to ever leave you without an episode
Speaker 1: if I can help it. So what we're gonna do
Speaker 1: is we're actually going to listen to an episode that
Speaker 1: I originally published on July fourteenth, one called Spoofing and
Speaker 1: Color I D. And the reason I picked this is
Speaker 1: because we've had a lot of news recently here in
Speaker 1: the United States about the Federal Communication Commission, or f CC,
Speaker 1: going after telecommunications companies for allowing these sorts of activities
Speaker 1: to happen, along with the related activity of robocall practices.
Speaker 1: And of course there's nothing inherently illegal about robo calls,
Speaker 1: but there's often use of robo calls to perpetuate scams
Speaker 1: and to defraud people, and that's really a major issue,
Speaker 1: so much so that recently the f c C sent
Speaker 1: a cease and desist letter to a telecom as a
Speaker 1: service like a communications platform as a service business called Twilio.
Speaker 1: Twilio is a big deal, like it does multiple billions
Speaker 1: of dollars of business every year. So this is unlike
Speaker 1: those cases where the FCC went after some tiny, little
Speaker 1: regional telecommunications company, which some have pointed out. You know,
Speaker 1: when you squash one of those tiny companies, typically the
Speaker 1: people behind it will incorporate as a different but similar company,
Speaker 1: like in other words, they'll they'll have a new name
Speaker 1: and maybe a new address and everything, but it's the
Speaker 1: same scheme as before. This is not one of those cases.
Speaker 1: This is a much larger company, not on the scale
Speaker 1: of something like a T and T, but a big,
Speaker 1: big company. And one of the reasons that these companies
Speaker 1: get so much flak is for the allowance of these
Speaker 1: kinds of practices. So to understand what spoofing is and
Speaker 1: how that affects color I D I thought it would
Speaker 1: be good to listen to this episode from a couple
Speaker 1: of years ago, and we'll be back later this week
Speaker 1: with brand new episodes as soon as I figure out
Speaker 1: what gremlins are infecting all of my hardware. If it's
Speaker 1: not one thing, it's another. Okay, I'll chat with you
Speaker 1: at the end of this episode. So today I thought
Speaker 1: I would talk a bit about Color I D, spoofing
Speaker 1: and robo calls. Mostly color I D and spoofing robot calls,
Speaker 1: I think I'm gonna have to say for another episode.
Speaker 1: But here in the United States, the major telecommunications companies,
Speaker 1: those being Verizon, T Mobile, and A T and T
Speaker 1: now have to work together to fight spam calls due
Speaker 1: to a mandate from the Federal Communications Commission, or f
Speaker 1: c C. Now, the too Long Didn't Listen message behind this,
Speaker 1: as opposed to too Long Didn't Read, is that the
Speaker 1: goal is to eliminate spam robo calls going to your
Speaker 1: phone so that you don't act like your phone is
Speaker 1: a bomb about to go off every time it rings.
Speaker 1: But to understand why this is necessary and how it
Speaker 1: all works, we have to go much deeper. So if you,
Speaker 1: dear listener, are of a certain age, you might remember
Speaker 1: a time when we didn't all carry smartphones around with
Speaker 1: us all the time. You might even remember a time
Speaker 1: before we even carried simple cell phones with us. In fact,
Speaker 1: some of you might remember being on a telephone handset
Speaker 1: that was tethered to a phone that was mounted to
Speaker 1: the wall, or sitting on top of an end table
Speaker 1: or something. And back in those days, dear friends, if
Speaker 1: someone called you, you really had no way of knowing
Speaker 1: who that someone was. I know, it's terrifying, right the
Speaker 1: phone rings, and there's no way to know who or
Speaker 1: what is on the other side. Could it be Grandpa
Speaker 1: Joe and he's found a golden ticket. Could it be
Speaker 1: the local food bank calling to see if you'll volunteer
Speaker 1: this year. Could it be a wrong number? The only
Speaker 1: way to find out was to answer the phone, or
Speaker 1: if you were a fancy person, you might let the
Speaker 1: call go to an answering machine. Side note. The answering
Speaker 1: machine traces its history all the way back to the
Speaker 1: nineteen thirties. But when I was going up in the
Speaker 1: seventies and eighties, they were still relatively uncommon from most
Speaker 1: of the people I knew. But by the mid eighties
Speaker 1: that that had totally changed, and we started seeing commercials
Speaker 1: for like novelty answering machine outgoing messages, Yeah, I used
Speaker 1: to be a thing. There was this incredible pressure to
Speaker 1: create the perfect outgoing message to convey to those calling
Speaker 1: that you had a personality. But I digress, let's get
Speaker 1: back on track. Many answering machines would play incoming messages
Speaker 1: out loud on a loudspeaker as someone was making the message,
Speaker 1: which meant that you could use an answering machine to
Speaker 1: screen your calls, and a lot of people did so.
Speaker 1: If you had anxiety about answering the phone, you could
Speaker 1: just wait for the answering machine to activate and then
Speaker 1: see if the other person on the other end of
Speaker 1: the call was going to wait around long enough to
Speaker 1: actually leave a message after hearing You're hilarious and yet
Speaker 1: incredibly effective outgoing message. Then upon recognizing the voice, you
Speaker 1: could choose to either interrupt the machine by picking up
Speaker 1: the phone and having the call initiate, or just letting
Speaker 1: it go. Simpler times, really not that color I D
Speaker 1: wasn't a thing back then. The foundation of color i
Speaker 1: D technology has a history that dates back to the
Speaker 1: late nineteen sixties, and to really understand all this, we
Speaker 1: should take get another step back and just talk about
Speaker 1: phone calls in general, and we'll build from there. So
Speaker 1: when Alexander Graham Bell made his first call, arguably not
Speaker 1: the first call, but that's a story for another time,
Speaker 1: it was a direct line from his station to that
Speaker 1: of his assistant, Thomas Watson. There was no need to
Speaker 1: route that call anywhere. It was a straight road, if
Speaker 1: you will, from one point to another. Now, let's say
Speaker 1: we've got a group of four people, and we want
Speaker 1: to connect these four people with phone lines so they
Speaker 1: can talk to each other on the phone. We could
Speaker 1: do this directly as well. Right, A simple way to
Speaker 1: draw this out would be just draw four points as
Speaker 1: corners of a square. Uh. Those corners represent our four
Speaker 1: phone friends, and we draw straight lines from each point
Speaker 1: to each other point. So what you end up with
Speaker 1: is a square with a couple of diagonal lines crossing
Speaker 1: through the center, and boom, you've got your four person network.
Speaker 1: Each person has a direct line to each other person
Speaker 1: in the network. But as we try to add more
Speaker 1: people to a system like this, we quickly see the
Speaker 1: limitations that we face. Each new connection means we have
Speaker 1: to establish cables between that person and every other person
Speaker 1: on the network. This gets expensive and complicated and messy
Speaker 1: and unsustainable. A phone network in which every single person
Speaker 1: with a phone has a direct line with every single
Speaker 1: other person with the phone is just impossible. You wouldn't
Speaker 1: even be able to move around because of all the
Speaker 1: cables everywhere, and so an important development in the history
Speaker 1: of the telephone system was the creation of the local exchange.
Speaker 1: The local exchange is a centralized point that you dial
Speaker 1: into and then the exchange could switch on a connection
Speaker 1: between your line and the line of whomever it was
Speaker 1: you wanted to call. So in the early days of telephones,
Speaker 1: this was done with actual human beings sitting at a
Speaker 1: switchboard and manually plugging cables into complete calls from one
Speaker 1: person to another. So now rather than having direct connections
Speaker 1: with every other phone in existence, you really just needed
Speaker 1: a direct connection from your phone to an exchange. This
Speaker 1: cuts way back on the amount of cables that you
Speaker 1: need in order to create a network. Now, this works
Speaker 1: fine for local calls, like you know, within a city,
Speaker 1: everyone can connect to that one local exchange, but the
Speaker 1: word local gives us a hint that there isn't one
Speaker 1: single exchange for every phone line out there. Now local
Speaker 1: exchanges will cover a specific region, but beyond that you
Speaker 1: have other local exchanges. And to connect these exchanges together,
Speaker 1: phone companies laid out what we're called trunk lines. These
Speaker 1: are cables capable of carrying multiple phone signals simultaneously, which
Speaker 1: is a good thing too. Otherwise a single long distance
Speaker 1: call would prevent anyone else from making a similar sort
Speaker 1: of call between you know, those two specific exchanges. The
Speaker 1: networks grew organically, connecting to one another and forming what
Speaker 1: we call the public switched Telephone network or p s
Speaker 1: t N. You could look at it as a sort
Speaker 1: of hierarchy as more of the world built out phone systems.
Speaker 1: At the very bottom of this hierarchy, you had your
Speaker 1: individual landline phones the stuff and homes and offices and
Speaker 1: phone booths and stuff like that. We used to have
Speaker 1: these things called phone booths, Superman, which change in them
Speaker 1: doesn't matter. One level up from this level and you
Speaker 1: have your local exchanges, right, These are the ones that
Speaker 1: connect local calls to each other. And as I said,
Speaker 1: in the old day, this was done with human operators
Speaker 1: moving physical plugs into physical outlets to complete circuits and
Speaker 1: switch on a phone call. But didn't take long before
Speaker 1: the complexity of phone systems necessitated innovation to create automated
Speaker 1: ways of handling this. One level up from local exchanges
Speaker 1: are your trunk exchanges. The trunk exchange is to local exchanges,
Speaker 1: as local exchanges are too individual landlines. The trunk exchanges
Speaker 1: allow the various local exchanges within a country to connect
Speaker 1: to one another. A level above the trunk exchanges, you
Speaker 1: have international gateways, which interconnect the phone system of one
Speaker 1: country with other countries. Often you end up having super
Speaker 1: long cables connecting these, including cables that run under the ocean.
Speaker 1: You know, there's cables under the Atlantic that connect Europe
Speaker 1: to North America, for example. All right, so now let's
Speaker 1: get a bit more complicated by throwing cellular phones into
Speaker 1: the mix. Sell phones communicate to cell towers, which you
Speaker 1: can think of as being kind of similar to the
Speaker 1: local exchange I was talking about earlier. So cell towers
Speaker 1: are essentially antenna, and the cell phones communicate with cell
Speaker 1: towers through electromagnetic radiation, specifically radiation that falls into the
Speaker 1: microwave frequency range. But they're not the same microwaves that
Speaker 1: we use to zap our popcorn and microwave ovens. It's
Speaker 1: not that level of frequency. It's also a very low
Speaker 1: wattage that we use for cell phones now. The microwave
Speaker 1: acts as a carrier wave, and I've talked a bit
Speaker 1: about carrier waves in the past with stuff like radio signals.
Speaker 1: Each phone is using a slightly different frequency, otherwise you
Speaker 1: would run into issues with phones interfering with one another.
Speaker 1: All right, So cell phone towers are at the heart
Speaker 1: of the cells that make up a service area. One
Speaker 1: really clever thing about this approach is the handshake that
Speaker 1: happens as you move across a region. So you can
Speaker 1: be on a phone call, and you can be let's say,
Speaker 1: in a car, and you pass out of the range
Speaker 1: of one cell phone or cell tower rather and you
Speaker 1: enter into the range of another, and your call continues
Speaker 1: on as if you had a solid connection on a
Speaker 1: single cell tower the entire time. I'm gonna leave it
Speaker 1: at that, because getting into the tech of all that
Speaker 1: would really get us off course. This episode would end
Speaker 1: up being like three hours long. But maybe I'll do
Speaker 1: a full episode about how cell towers work. It is
Speaker 1: really fascinating because they have to be very careful with
Speaker 1: the frequencies they use in order to both service everyone
Speaker 1: who's within range of a specific cell tower and not
Speaker 1: interfere with anyone who's at a neighboring cell tower anyway.
Speaker 1: Connecting the towers is the Mobile Telephone Switching Office or
Speaker 1: mt s O. Each service provider has its own empty
Speaker 1: s O in regions, So if the person you're talking
Speaker 1: with is in the same region, such as like in
Speaker 1: the same city as you, and they happen to be
Speaker 1: on the same carrier, one MT s O pretty much
Speaker 1: handles every thing. The call signals go through the cell
Speaker 1: towers to one another through the m t s O,
Speaker 1: but the calls are not made directly phone to phone.
Speaker 1: It's not like your phone is acting like a radio
Speaker 1: directly with the other phone. Now, if you're calling someone
Speaker 1: who's on the other side of the country, it's a
Speaker 1: little bit different. Typically, your call would go from your
Speaker 1: phone to a cell tower, and from the cell tower
Speaker 1: to the local MT s O of your carrier, then
Speaker 1: from there to the ps TN, that big public switching
Speaker 1: telephone network, and that would then route your call to
Speaker 1: the MT s O relevant to whomever it was your
Speaker 1: calling on the other end. So even cell calls can
Speaker 1: rely upon the old phone system. Getting back to call
Speaker 1: or I D. Back in the nineteen sixties, there was
Speaker 1: an engineer named Theodore Paris Cavacos. It still is, I mean,
Speaker 1: he's still alive today. He developed a way to send
Speaker 1: electronic data over telephone lines. In one he filed and
Speaker 1: received a patent for are a quote decoding and display
Speaker 1: apparatus for groups of pulse trains end quote. This would
Speaker 1: become the basis of color i D, in which the
Speaker 1: telephone of the person making the call will send data
Speaker 1: relating to the phone number of that originating call along
Speaker 1: with the call itself, and a device on the other
Speaker 1: end on the receiveing end could get this information, decode it,
Speaker 1: and display the incoming phone number and thus identify the
Speaker 1: incoming call. Other engineers around the same time period began
Speaker 1: to develop similar technologies and approaches, and so the early
Speaker 1: days of color I D are a bit muddled, as
Speaker 1: there are numerous patents assigned to different inventors, some of
Speaker 1: which acknowledged the existence of other inventions as prior art.
Speaker 1: One of those inventors was Katsuo Hashimoto for a quote
Speaker 1: Telephone Information Displaying Device end quote. The abstract of that
Speaker 1: patent essentially lays out what we think go as color
Speaker 1: I D. So I'm going to read to you the
Speaker 1: abstract of this patent. Here he goes a calling parties
Speaker 1: telephone number displaying device, in which, while the telephone set
Speaker 1: of a subscriber is ringing in response to calling signals
Speaker 1: from a telephone exchange office, the telephone number of a
Speaker 1: calling party and information are displayed on digital display units
Speaker 1: at high speed before lifting the handset. Accordingly, the subscriber
Speaker 1: can determine whether or not he should answer the call
Speaker 1: before picking up the handset. Thus his privacy can be
Speaker 1: protected from a variety of telephone troubles such as wrong
Speaker 1: number and nuisance calls. The display is maintained as it
Speaker 1: is even if the handset is put back after the talk,
Speaker 1: but it will be cleared automatically upon reception of the
Speaker 1: next call to display the telephone number of the next
Speaker 1: calling party. When the subscriber picks up the handset to
Speaker 1: make a call, the internal circuit is automatically changed to
Speaker 1: display a telephone number dialed by him. That's it. So
Speaker 1: that patent pretty much explains that the invention would allow
Speaker 1: telephones to send and receive signals between successive ringing signals.
Speaker 1: So In other words, when the phone company isn't sending
Speaker 1: the signal to make the receiving phone ring, it could
Speaker 1: send the signal containing information about the origin of that call.
Speaker 1: And that's why if you're using a landline and you
Speaker 1: get a phone call with a system that had color
Speaker 1: I D, you would only see the I D stuff
Speaker 1: pop up after the first ring happened. The method for
Speaker 1: sending the information was a type of frequency modulation that's
Speaker 1: changing the frequency of a signal in order to encode
Speaker 1: information on it, called frequency shift keying or f s K.
Speaker 1: Applying f s K to a carrier signal alters that
Speaker 1: carrier signal in a way that can be interpreted on
Speaker 1: the other side in some manner. So in the case
Speaker 1: of color I D, that some manner is that the
Speaker 1: transmitting side can encode the phone number in that carrier way,
Speaker 1: and the receiving side can decode that carrier wave and
Speaker 1: get back at that number. FSK is used in lots
Speaker 1: of applications, not just Color I D. But for our purposes,
Speaker 1: it's just important that we know that this is the
Speaker 1: methodology that the phone companies used to transmit the info
Speaker 1: of Hey, this is the phone number that just dialed you.
Speaker 1: But this wasn't going to be a service that phone
Speaker 1: companies were going to throw in for free. No, this
Speaker 1: would be something that companies would charge for on top
Speaker 1: of the normal phone bill. Now, the story goes that
Speaker 1: the phone companies at first planned to offer this service
Speaker 1: as an audio one. So in other words, you could
Speaker 1: opt into this service and you would get a verbal
Speaker 1: alert when you picked up the phone telling you the
Speaker 1: phone number that the call originated from. UH and the
Speaker 1: phone companies were hoping to charge on a per use basis,
Speaker 1: so every time you did this you get charged a
Speaker 1: little amount. That's not how things eventually turned out. We'll
Speaker 1: get into color I D a little bit more after
Speaker 1: the break, and then we'll talk about the systems that
Speaker 1: enable spoofing. But first let's take that quick break. So,
Speaker 1: phone companies were licensing technologies to enable color I D
Speaker 1: in the nineteen seventies, but it wasn't until the mid
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties that we saw the first pilot program of
Speaker 1: color I D here in the United States. That took
Speaker 1: place in Orlando, Florida, where you know, the characters from
Speaker 1: Book of Mormon really wanted to go. And that happened
Speaker 1: back In nine four, Bell South offered a service called
Speaker 1: Touch Star, and Color i D was one of the
Speaker 1: features that you could opt into with Touch Star. It
Speaker 1: was called Custom Local Area Signaling Service, but it would
Speaker 1: become known as Color i D. Now, if you weren't
Speaker 1: around in the nineteen eighties, you might be surprised to
Speaker 1: hear that the emergence of color i D was viewed
Speaker 1: with suspicion from multiple fronts in the US. Paul piticians
Speaker 1: were asking if perhaps Color i D would violate wire
Speaker 1: tapping laws, and others were likening it to tracing a
Speaker 1: phone call, kind of like what you see in movies,
Speaker 1: where you know, the police are trying to track a
Speaker 1: specific criminal as they talk on the phone. But in fact,
Speaker 1: it was such a controversial subject that it took more
Speaker 1: than a decade for all fifty states in the US
Speaker 1: to actually adopt the technology. California held out the longest.
Speaker 1: California only incorporated color i D in nineteen twelve years
Speaker 1: after Orlando, Florida got in on it. And by the
Speaker 1: mid nineties, there was another big concern to think about,
Speaker 1: and that was privacy. We weren't quite at the same
Speaker 1: level that we are now, not by a long shot,
Speaker 1: where the average medicine has generated tons of information about
Speaker 1: themselves that can link back to them. But we were
Speaker 1: entering into an era in which certain companies were building
Speaker 1: out comprehensive databases about consumers, and so you started to
Speaker 1: see companies building out profiles or even dossiers on people. Now,
Speaker 1: if you want to be charitable, you could argue this
Speaker 1: helped those companies serve their customers more effectively. But if
Speaker 1: you want to be cynical, you could say that this
Speaker 1: gave companies more information to leverage while trying to sell
Speaker 1: goods or services to a potential customer. The truth is
Speaker 1: probably somewhere in the middle. But what concerned privacy advocates
Speaker 1: is that a business could theoretically rely on caller I D.
Speaker 1: So if someone were to call in, let's say that
Speaker 1: someone needs to talk to a customer service rep, then
Speaker 1: that rep could do a reverse phone number, look up
Speaker 1: on that call, and pull up a full profile of
Speaker 1: the person calling. And there were a lot of privacy
Speaker 1: implications that we're concerning. Actually kind of seems quaint in
Speaker 1: comparison to what we deal with today, at least if
Speaker 1: you look into how private information gets handled. These days.
Speaker 1: For that reason, tell A phone companies introduced an option
Speaker 1: to allow customers to opt into color I D blocking. Now,
Speaker 1: if you did this, it meant that your number would
Speaker 1: not be displayed when you called someone else. You were
Speaker 1: effectively blacklisted for color I D. And so you know,
Speaker 1: if I opted into this and I called you, you
Speaker 1: would probably see some sort of message like color unknown
Speaker 1: or something similar to that, which probably means you wouldn't
Speaker 1: likely pick up my call. To be fair, you probably
Speaker 1: wouldn't anyway, I'm kind of a drag to speak to
Speaker 1: on the phone. It took time for attitudes around color
Speaker 1: I D to change, but we did obviously see that
Speaker 1: happen today. For many people, including myself, we don't pick
Speaker 1: up the phone if we don't recognize the number that's
Speaker 1: displayed on our phone screen, and that means that if
Speaker 1: the call comes up as unknown or something along those lines,
Speaker 1: we're not likely to answer it. We'll probably let it
Speaker 1: go to voicemail. In fact, these days, I feel a
Speaker 1: sense of anxiety even if I do recognize the number,
Speaker 1: which is weird because I was one of those folks
Speaker 1: who back in the eighties and nineties I love to
Speaker 1: talk on the phone now it seems kind of odd.
Speaker 1: I have a small group of friends and family with
Speaker 1: whom I'll chat with on the phone, but they are
Speaker 1: truly the exception and not the rule. Anyway, Color I
Speaker 1: D made the transition from being viewed as being invasive
Speaker 1: or creepy as to being necessary in order to function
Speaker 1: as a human being in the modern technical age. And
Speaker 1: there's a related thing I should talk about quickly for
Speaker 1: folks in the United States, and that's the Calling Name presentation.
Speaker 1: That's c NAP or Color Name Delivery, that's c NAM systems.
Speaker 1: These are systems that can provide a name to go
Speaker 1: with a phone number. So with these systems, you don't
Speaker 1: just get a telephone number, you get a person or
Speaker 1: business name that is associated with that phone number. So
Speaker 1: here's how it works. In the United States. I'd say
Speaker 1: we've got two people. We've got Max and Chris. And
Speaker 1: Max is in New York and Chris is in California.
Speaker 1: What's more, Max is a T mobile customer and Chriss
Speaker 1: carrier is a T and T. And both Max and
Speaker 1: Chris are using smartphones, so they're on cellular networks. So
Speaker 1: Max calls Chris. Max's smartphone is connected to a nearby
Speaker 1: cell tower, nearby T Mobile cell tower, and that routes
Speaker 1: the call through T Mobiles M T s O in
Speaker 1: that particular region, and the empty s O then routes
Speaker 1: the call through the ps t N, the Public Switching
Speaker 1: Telephone network, and that then routes the call to the
Speaker 1: A T and T M T s O all the
Speaker 1: way out in California. That connects to a cell tower
Speaker 1: that's in Chris's area, and it sends the call to
Speaker 1: Chris's smartphone. Now it's at this stage, the A T
Speaker 1: and T stage, where we see the system call up
Speaker 1: the name. So, in other words, the name look up
Speaker 1: is on the receiver's end. It doesn't originate from the
Speaker 1: the phone that's making the call. It's all down to
Speaker 1: whichever carrier is an operation on the receiving end, and
Speaker 1: A T and T sees that Max's phone number is
Speaker 1: coming in, so it recognizes the number. But to associate
Speaker 1: that number with Max as a person that requires a
Speaker 1: database look up. And because Max is a T mobile
Speaker 1: customer not an A T and T customer, A T
Speaker 1: and T technically has to pay a very small fee
Speaker 1: called a DIP fee to look up the information and
Speaker 1: then to send that on to Chris. Then Chris sees
Speaker 1: that Max is calling and picks up, or Chris ghosts Max.
Speaker 1: I don't know what their friendship looks like, to be honest,
Speaker 1: my point being that the name associated with a phone
Speaker 1: number isn't magically connected to that number. Rather, there are
Speaker 1: these massive databases of phone customers out there, typically at
Speaker 1: the local level, and these databases match numbers two names.
Speaker 1: There's no universal database out there that has every name
Speaker 1: and every number, So phone companies have these ongoing agreements
Speaker 1: to charge these small dip fees to dip into the
Speaker 1: databases and retrieve relevant information. All right, So that's color
Speaker 1: I D and I think it's pretty easy to understand
Speaker 1: from a high level how it works. But then what
Speaker 1: about spoofing. Well, spoofing is a practice in which the
Speaker 1: number that pops up on a color I D system
Speaker 1: is not the same as the actual number making the call,
Speaker 1: And there are legitimate reasons to do this that have
Speaker 1: nothing to do with scams or crimes. So spoofing as
Speaker 1: it stands is not illegal on its own. It's only
Speaker 1: illegal if you're using spoofing to purposefully mislead or scam people.
Speaker 1: Then you can face a pretty big fine in the
Speaker 1: United States. But spoofing is just a thing, not illegal.
Speaker 1: So let me give you a scenario where it's it's allowed.
Speaker 1: Let's say that you work at an accounting firm and
Speaker 1: you're in charge of making some follow up calls relating
Speaker 1: to a specific account. Now, you have your own phone
Speaker 1: at your desk, but and your own phone actually has
Speaker 1: its own extension, you can make calls within your department,
Speaker 1: you know two, directly to your coworkers, no problem. But
Speaker 1: chances are you would rather have your outgoing calls, the
Speaker 1: ones you make outside of your company, map not to
Speaker 1: your desk's phone number, but to the number for the
Speaker 1: accounting firm as a whole. That way, anyone on the
Speaker 1: receiving end would see that it's a call coming from
Speaker 1: this big accounting company, not some unknown desk phone. You
Speaker 1: would need a way to replace your desk phone's number
Speaker 1: with the overall company's phone number. This happens all the
Speaker 1: time with big companies and doctor's offices and stuff like that,
Speaker 1: So you can probably think of lots of legitimate uses
Speaker 1: where the call going out seems to be coming from
Speaker 1: a very large, known entity rather than an individual phone
Speaker 1: located within that entity. But to make this happen, you
Speaker 1: have to have some sort of technology that does the
Speaker 1: old switcherou with the phone numbers. Now, as I mentioned earlier,
Speaker 1: color I D in the old phone system involves using
Speaker 1: f s K or frequency shift keying, to alter a
Speaker 1: carrier signal in a specific way to transmit information about
Speaker 1: a phone number in between the signals that cause the
Speaker 1: receiving phone to ring. And it turned out that if
Speaker 1: you could figure out the f s K process and
Speaker 1: build the right technology, you could build out a system
Speaker 1: that would use FSK to transmit false information, allowing you
Speaker 1: to mask the true originating number of a call and
Speaker 1: substitute in something else will let you spoof a phone number.
Speaker 1: In other words, And this again was was made on
Speaker 1: purpose eventually, like when once we got to the point
Speaker 1: where we had big companies with these kind of phone systems,
Speaker 1: it was sort of a necessity. So it's not like
Speaker 1: this was an oversight or or rather it wasn't a vulnerability.
Speaker 1: It ended up being an opportunity. But if you wanted
Speaker 1: to take advantage of it, it wasn't really easy to do.
Speaker 1: Back in the early two thousands, for example, it was
Speaker 1: actually pretty challenging. With the right hardware and software, and
Speaker 1: with a digital phone line, you could manage it, but
Speaker 1: it was beyond most people. Some big businesses used it
Speaker 1: for the purposes I mentioned earlier, but that was kind
Speaker 1: of the extent of it. Now, part of what makes
Speaker 1: this possible is a system called a private branch exchange
Speaker 1: or p b X, So this doesn't fit neatly into
Speaker 1: that hierarchy I mentioned earlier. A p b X is
Speaker 1: a telephone system that's typically within a really big organization,
Speaker 1: like a big business, And essentially what it does is
Speaker 1: it allows for an internal telephone system, that is, one
Speaker 1: that connects all the internal phones with each other or
Speaker 1: but it keeps a limited number of external phone lines
Speaker 1: that connect outward to the general you know, public switching
Speaker 1: telephone network or PSTN. So let's say we're looking at
Speaker 1: a corporation with like five thousand employees. Rather than making
Speaker 1: sure every single employee has a direct phone line to
Speaker 1: the outside world, the business chooses to set up a
Speaker 1: PBX while there's a phone at every employee's desk, and
Speaker 1: these phones can make direct calls to one another within
Speaker 1: the businesses local network. To make a call to the
Speaker 1: outside world. First, you might have to do something like
Speaker 1: dial A nine and that actually opens up one of
Speaker 1: the business is limited external phone lines. So let's say
Speaker 1: that this particular business has one hundred dedicated external phone lines,
Speaker 1: which sounds like a lot, but it's way fewer than
Speaker 1: the five thousand you would need for every single employee
Speaker 1: to have their own personal external line. As long as
Speaker 1: fewer than one hundred employees are making calls to the
Speaker 1: outside world at any given to, i'm there's not really
Speaker 1: a problem here. There are different flavors of p b X,
Speaker 1: and they date back even to when the phone system
Speaker 1: was purely running on analog signals and there were no
Speaker 1: digital signal phone lines. Today, p b X has include
Speaker 1: technologies like voice over Internet Protocol or void an I
Speaker 1: p p b X or Internet Protocol. Private branch exchange
Speaker 1: can sometimes include the ability to spoof a phone number.
Speaker 1: It can be built into the system. Sometimes it's got
Speaker 1: a very easy way to access and make these changes.
Speaker 1: You'll just have like a little online form and you
Speaker 1: can go in and you can select what you want
Speaker 1: the outgoing call number to look like. But you know,
Speaker 1: it's really handy if you want everything to look like
Speaker 1: it's coming from a major office phone number. But it's
Speaker 1: also opened up the opportunity to start a new kind
Speaker 1: of fraudulent business. One early company that try to create
Speaker 1: a business out of spoofing was founded by a dude
Speaker 1: named Jason Jepson, who launched a service called Star thirty
Speaker 1: eight dot com with start customers who from the beginning,
Speaker 1: we're supposed to be limited to people like licensed private investigators,
Speaker 1: law enforcement and debt collectors would be allowed to pay
Speaker 1: a fee and that would let them make phone calls
Speaker 1: while disguising the phone number that they were using as
Speaker 1: you know, something else. Now that the thinking was that
Speaker 1: the average person isn't keen to pick up the phone
Speaker 1: if they happen to know that there's a private investigator
Speaker 1: on the line or a debt collection agency, you know,
Speaker 1: they would rather ghost that call. So the thinking was
Speaker 1: it sure would be useful to be able to hide
Speaker 1: that information and convince the person on the other end
Speaker 1: of that that line to actually pick up the phone.
Speaker 1: So the best way to do that is to hide
Speaker 1: who you are. Start three eight dot com didn't have
Speaker 1: a long and illustrious history in its original form. Three
Speaker 1: days after he launched the service, Jepson announced he was
Speaker 1: looking to sell the business. He had received numerous threats
Speaker 1: and harassing calls and felt it was just, you know,
Speaker 1: not the right line of work for him. Other services
Speaker 1: like one called Camo Phone, you know, like camouflage, but
Speaker 1: Camo Phone, those kind of surfaced, and Star thirty eight
Speaker 1: actually did come back as a service marketed as being
Speaker 1: exclusive to law enforcement agencies, and that was really the
Speaker 1: beginning of spoofing. But when we come back, we'll talk
Speaker 1: about how spoofing really proliferated as VOIPE systems grew in popularity,
Speaker 1: and how the FCC is responding to the issue today.
Speaker 1: But first let's take another quick break. The emergence of
Speaker 1: voice over Internet protocol was one of those truly disruptive technologies.
Speaker 1: In this case, it was disrupting the telecommunications business that
Speaker 1: got you know, totally turned on its head. Because of
Speaker 1: this Voice would allow people to make phone calls using
Speaker 1: the Internet as the transmission system, essentially bypassing the phone
Speaker 1: companies in the process, at least on one end of
Speaker 1: the call. Possibly both void phones can connect to one
Speaker 1: another over the Internet and not even touch the phone system,
Speaker 1: at least not the way that normal telephone calls do.
Speaker 1: But what if someone were to use a voice system
Speaker 1: to call someone in a with a phone that's connected
Speaker 1: to the old public Switching Telephone network or ps t N. Well,
Speaker 1: any voice call connecting to the ps t N has
Speaker 1: to go through what's called a void gateway, which serves
Speaker 1: as a bridge between the two systems. See voice traffic
Speaker 1: over the Internet protocol. UH. That that's using packet switching protocols.
Speaker 1: That's what the Internet at large uses in order to
Speaker 1: send data. It divides up files into packets of information
Speaker 1: and then sends them across the network to be essentially
Speaker 1: reassembled on the other side. But this is incompatible with
Speaker 1: how phone calls are transmitted across the ps t N.
Speaker 1: It's two totally different systems. So the gateway has to
Speaker 1: decompress the digital packets from the voice call and turn
Speaker 1: it into a digital signal that then can be converted
Speaker 1: into an analog signal to cross the ps t N,
Speaker 1: which is pretty wild right. Gateways also come in different flavors.
Speaker 1: There are standalone gateways UH, then there are gateway functions
Speaker 1: that can be built into specific types of routers. H.
Speaker 1: There's also the I P P B X that I
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier. Those can act as gateways. The important part
Speaker 1: for our discussion is that many of these voice services
Speaker 1: allow users to take advantage of p b X features.
Speaker 1: Traditionally only big companies could use, including spoofing the phone number.
Speaker 1: So as void technology proliferated and as more providers began
Speaker 1: to offer up spoofing services, including ones that just they
Speaker 1: allow you to start up an account and you pay
Speaker 1: a certain amount and then from that point forward you
Speaker 1: get just have your account deducted whenever you're making calls
Speaker 1: using spoofing. This kind of of technology really allowed bad
Speaker 1: actors to see potential for spoofing numbers for malicious purposes.
Speaker 1: The goal is always to convince someone to pick up
Speaker 1: the ding dang phone, and while the popular approaches centered
Speaker 1: around spoofing is to create a number that is similar
Speaker 1: to the target number you're calling, so in other words,
Speaker 1: trying to get something within the same area code, maybe
Speaker 1: even the same phone prefix. I get this all the
Speaker 1: time with with spoofed numbers. So the idea is that
Speaker 1: if you see a number pop up on caller I
Speaker 1: D and it appears to be a local number, you're
Speaker 1: more likely to pick up the phone because you're more
Speaker 1: likely to feel that the person on the other end
Speaker 1: of that call is someone you know, or at least
Speaker 1: it's something relevant to you as how they get you. Well,
Speaker 1: it's one way. Another way is to use databases of
Speaker 1: personal information to create spear fishing attempts, though not every
Speaker 1: scammer goes to that kind of trouble, but they could
Speaker 1: attempt to spoof specific numbers that you might know, so
Speaker 1: you might think, oh, it's my auntie calling. I wonder
Speaker 1: what's up, and you answer and you find out it's
Speaker 1: not your auntie, it's a scammer. Uh. A lot of
Speaker 1: these hackers and scammers just sort of cast a very
Speaker 1: wide net to see if they catch anything. If you
Speaker 1: pick up a phone that is a catch. At that point,
Speaker 1: you might be prompted to say press a number in
Speaker 1: response to a specific direction, you know, like press two
Speaker 1: to speak with a representative. Don't do it, it's a
Speaker 1: bad idea. A lot of these are actually worked into
Speaker 1: systems where if you do a button press, it gets
Speaker 1: interpreted as an authorization for a charge, and the scammers
Speaker 1: are making money off of this, and you're getting charged
Speaker 1: through your phone company and you get these you know,
Speaker 1: fraudulent charges on your account, so don't fall for that.
Speaker 1: Um Uh, this is essentially illegal. I mean, it is illegal,
Speaker 1: but doesn't stop people from doing it because it's kind
Speaker 1: of hard to catch them. Uh. You might also get
Speaker 1: someone who's on the other end of the call and
Speaker 1: they're looking to get valuable information from you, like a
Speaker 1: bank account number or something. Obviously, is a bad idea
Speaker 1: to engage in this sort of stuff. In fact, it's
Speaker 1: bad enough that some phone companies and the FCC have
Speaker 1: argued that if you don't recognize a number, don't answer it.
Speaker 1: Think about that for a moment. This you have companies
Speaker 1: like phone companies, their business is charging customers for this
Speaker 1: inner connectivity, this ability to have communication channels open. And
Speaker 1: then they're saying, by the way, if you don't recognize
Speaker 1: the number, don't use our services, which we are charging
Speaker 1: you for. It's kind of wild, right, because you would think,
Speaker 1: if this is that big of a problem, surely there
Speaker 1: has to be some measure you can take to kind
Speaker 1: of curtail this problem. Because what you're telling me right
Speaker 1: now is that your service isn't good enough for me
Speaker 1: to rely upon all the time. Because there are people
Speaker 1: who are leveraging it to try and take advantage of me.
Speaker 1: That's not a great marketing message right now. The use
Speaker 1: of numbers that are similar to your own typically gets
Speaker 1: called neighbor spoofing or neighborhood spoofing, and it's a pretty
Speaker 1: irritating tactic. Uh. It's also possible that someone could spoof
Speaker 1: your phone number while they are calling someone else, So
Speaker 1: for them, it's going to come up on color I
Speaker 1: D that you're the person making the call, right, it's
Speaker 1: gonna be your own number, even though you're not the
Speaker 1: one doing it. It's because it's been spoofed. So the
Speaker 1: question is what do you do if that happens to you.
Speaker 1: You are not going to like the answer, because there's
Speaker 1: not much you can do other than try to explain
Speaker 1: to anyone who's calling you up angry that you're making
Speaker 1: these calls that you're not the one making the calls
Speaker 1: that are upsetting them. That's kind of difficult to get
Speaker 1: across because people are looking at their color I D
Speaker 1: and say no, I see on my idea that you
Speaker 1: are the one calling me. I'm telling you to stop,
Speaker 1: and you're might. Meanwhile, you're trying to say no, no,
Speaker 1: I promise it's not me. Someone is spoofing my phone number.
Speaker 1: Depending upon the person on the other end of the line,
Speaker 1: they might not have any idea of what that means
Speaker 1: or even know that that's possible. Now, I've had this
Speaker 1: happened to me in the past, however not on my
Speaker 1: personal phone. So many years ago, I was working at
Speaker 1: a consulting firm and I was getting calls from UH
Speaker 1: a woman who was angry that I was calling her,
Speaker 1: and I was making these crazy machine noises into her phone.
Speaker 1: Now I figured out that what was happening was that
Speaker 1: some fax machine was calling her landline as if it
Speaker 1: were another fax machine, and since her phone is not
Speaker 1: a fax machine, she was just getting that garbled electronic
Speaker 1: mass of sounds whenever she picked up the receiver. And
Speaker 1: she said that the number that was associated on color
Speaker 1: I D belonged to the company I worked for. So
Speaker 1: I had her read me the number, and sure enough,
Speaker 1: it was our office's main phone number, but it wasn't
Speaker 1: our facts number, it wasn't the number for the fax
Speaker 1: machine we had. And I even went over to our
Speaker 1: fax machine and I used a report to generate a
Speaker 1: report to that told me about all the outgoing calls
Speaker 1: that had been made, every single facts that had been sent.
Speaker 1: And this was in a day where we still facts
Speaker 1: occasionally anyway, And I checked it against this woman's number,
Speaker 1: and I saw there was no call from our facts
Speaker 1: machine going out to her number. There was nothing coming
Speaker 1: out from our office that was going to her. But
Speaker 1: it appeared as though someone had been spoofing our office's
Speaker 1: phone number for facts no less and was sending out
Speaker 1: stuff to people like this woman. And there wasn't anything
Speaker 1: I could do about it because we had nothing to
Speaker 1: do with the situation in the first place. We were
Speaker 1: victims just as she was. Someone else had picked our
Speaker 1: number to use a mask for some reason, and because
Speaker 1: the voice system they were using allowed for this kind
Speaker 1: of thing, there was really no way for us to
Speaker 1: even know who was doing it, much less stop them.
Speaker 1: It was frustrating for the woman, and it was not
Speaker 1: super great for me either, because I genuinely wanted to
Speaker 1: help her. I don't want anyone to be, you know,
Speaker 1: aggravated and harassed in this way, and that really stinks, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, if someone makes use of your number and
Speaker 1: then harasses another person, you could be left holding the
Speaker 1: bag and your defenses it wasn't me. Someone spoofed my
Speaker 1: phone number. That is pretty hard to prove to someone
Speaker 1: unless you can actually show them that your phone did
Speaker 1: not make those outgoing calls by just showing them a
Speaker 1: record of every call you've made over you know, whatever
Speaker 1: length of time. But more frequently we find ourselves on
Speaker 1: the receiving end of these calls, which I guess we
Speaker 1: should be thankful for because it's irritating, but nause irritating
Speaker 1: as being blamed for them. And the frequency of these
Speaker 1: calls have picked up the pace over the years. Now
Speaker 1: twenty twenty was actually a bit of an outlier. We
Speaker 1: saw a dip and spoofed robo calls in but in
Speaker 1: June one there were more than four billion robot calls.
Speaker 1: So it's not like that's a problem that's gonna go away.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's nearly a hundred fifty million robo calls
Speaker 1: per day. That being said, the FCC and major phone
Speaker 1: carriers are trying to fight back a bit. The f
Speaker 1: c C past a mandate actually Congress past the law
Speaker 1: that requires all the major carriers in the US, those
Speaker 1: being A T and T, Verizon Anti Mobile to comply
Speaker 1: with the rule that requires them to incorporate a technology
Speaker 1: called stir slash shaken, which is very James Bondish, you know. Now.
Speaker 1: The idea behind this is that stir slash shaken is
Speaker 1: supposed to verify that a number that pops up on
Speaker 1: color I D is in fact the number that belongs
Speaker 1: to the line that's making that phone call in the
Speaker 1: first place. In other words, it's supposed to help detect spoofing.
Speaker 1: It would mean that phone companies could filter calls and
Speaker 1: potentially block some of them, or at least label them
Speaker 1: as spam before they get to your your phone. Now,
Speaker 1: those three carriers have said that they have all enabled
Speaker 1: this technology on their own networks, which is good because
Speaker 1: the deadline for doing so was this past June je
Speaker 1: to be precise. Smaller regional carriers in the Unit States
Speaker 1: currently have a deadline of June three to implement this technology,
Speaker 1: though that could change. The FCC might step up that deadline.
Speaker 1: So what's going on with this technology? Well, first let's
Speaker 1: talk about what these names stand for. Though I suspect
Speaker 1: there's some backronym shenanigans going on here. That is that,
Speaker 1: you know, they came up with the names and then
Speaker 1: tried to figure out what they stood for as opposed
Speaker 1: to the other way around. Anyway, STIR stands for Secure
Speaker 1: Telephony Identity revisited and SHAKEN stands for secure handling of
Speaker 1: asserted information using tokens. So the Ken part of SHAKEN
Speaker 1: comes from tokens, And you cannot convince me that this
Speaker 1: wasn't some crazy backronym thing. Anyway, these two technologies work
Speaker 1: in tandem. SHAKEN is honestly just sort of a broader thing.
Speaker 1: We'll get to it. So STIR comes out of a
Speaker 1: working group of the organization i e. T F that
Speaker 1: stands for Internet Engineering Task Force. The group figured out
Speaker 1: a way to append digital signatures on a call as
Speaker 1: a means of authenticating that a call comes from a
Speaker 1: specific phone number for real zes. SHAKEN refers to the
Speaker 1: standards that service providers are supposed to follow while they're
Speaker 1: deploying STIR in their networks. So SHAKEN really is here's
Speaker 1: how you use this technology that is STIR. The protocols
Speaker 1: give three levels of attestation that carriers can assign to
Speaker 1: a call or service providers, I think is how they
Speaker 1: were that service providers can assign to a call, So
Speaker 1: full attestation means that the service provider has a call
Speaker 1: originating out of their service and they say that that
Speaker 1: call is in fact coming from a number that this
Speaker 1: particular customer is authorized to use, so, in other words,
Speaker 1: it's legit. Then you have partial a testation, and that
Speaker 1: means that the carrier has authenticated the customer making the call.
Speaker 1: They're saying, we know who is making the call. However,
Speaker 1: we cannot verify that this customer is actually authorized to
Speaker 1: use the number in question. Then there's gateway at a station,
Speaker 1: means that the service provider can authenticate where it received
Speaker 1: a call, but can't authenticate the source, can't say who
Speaker 1: for certain sent it. The information is meant to be
Speaker 1: shared between carriers so that one carrier can essentially say
Speaker 1: to another, hey, here's this call that needs to go
Speaker 1: over your network to get to your customer, but I
Speaker 1: totes can't verify that the call is legit, so it
Speaker 1: maybe suss just a heads up, and then your carrier
Speaker 1: might block the call or append to label, alerting you
Speaker 1: the end customer that the call could be spam. The
Speaker 1: way this works in practice is you've got someone making
Speaker 1: a call. Let's say it's scuzzy scumbag who's posing as
Speaker 1: a member of the Internal Revenue Service, but Scuzzy really
Speaker 1: just wants to fish personal information out of you. Scuzzy
Speaker 1: picks up the phone or more likely uses an automated
Speaker 1: robo dialer and calls your number and spoofs their own
Speaker 1: number in the process to make it seem as if
Speaker 1: it's the I r S calling you. The call goes
Speaker 1: out over Scuzzies service provider, whomever that may be. The
Speaker 1: service provider takes a look at the originating number and
Speaker 1: the source of the call to determine what level of
Speaker 1: attestation to assign to that call. Then it makes use
Speaker 1: of an authentication service to create a digital certificate that
Speaker 1: holds onto this information, then passes both the call and
Speaker 1: the certificate on so that it ultimately ends at the
Speaker 1: terminating service provider. This would be whatever service provider you use.
Speaker 1: So let's say it's like a T and T. So
Speaker 1: now it gets sent to a T and T. So
Speaker 1: a T and T. Your service provider, upon receiving this
Speaker 1: signal and digital certificate, sends the certificate to a verification service,
Speaker 1: which attempts to verify if the originating source of the
Speaker 1: call is authorized to make calls from that number it
Speaker 1: claims to be calling from. Then it returns this information
Speaker 1: to a T and T and then a T and
Speaker 1: T can either block the call or label it or
Speaker 1: pass it on to you. So this approach is not
Speaker 1: like a catch all for all robo calls and spam
Speaker 1: or even for spoofing. It's not going to put an
Speaker 1: end to it, but it is meant to help cut
Speaker 1: back on those practices. There are other companies trying to
Speaker 1: address this issue in other ways. There are companies that
Speaker 1: have blocking services that you can use. There's the Do
Speaker 1: Not Call Registry that you can be part of, and
Speaker 1: then companies like Verizon or trying something different like Verizon
Speaker 1: has introduced an updated call filter app that will send
Speaker 1: suspected spam calls that appear to have phone numbers from
Speaker 1: your area straight to voicemail. So, in other words, those
Speaker 1: neighborhoods spoofing calls would never even make your phone ring,
Speaker 1: it would go straight to your voicemail. Of course, this
Speaker 1: means that if there is someone from your region who
Speaker 1: is actually trying to call you for real, zes they
Speaker 1: might end up going straight to voicemail too. Now you
Speaker 1: can go into the apps filter settings and turn those
Speaker 1: off for specific numbers. So it's not like, you know,
Speaker 1: it's an all or nothing, but it does mean that
Speaker 1: at least in some cases, there might be more hands
Speaker 1: on work for the consumer to get everything to work
Speaker 1: out properly. Now, I think we will continue to see
Speaker 1: companies and governments really try to crack down on this
Speaker 1: practice because it's so irritating. Like the people in charge
Speaker 1: don't like it either, right, Politicians do not like robo
Speaker 1: calls and spam because it affects them too, and so
Speaker 1: we're likely to see more strides taken to try and
Speaker 1: combat it. At the same time, we'll see the people
Speaker 1: who are making use of it try and find way
Speaker 1: is around the system. So it's going to be a
Speaker 1: c saw kind of approach, and it's certainly an irritating one.
Speaker 1: So if, like me, you treat your phone like it's
Speaker 1: a way to send email and text and that's it,
Speaker 1: or maybe occasionally, you know, look at pictures of cats,
Speaker 1: then you're in good company because this approach of robocalls
Speaker 1: and spoofing has really created a an environment of distrust
Speaker 1: with our communication devices, so much so that the companies
Speaker 1: in charge of providing those services are saying yeah, kind
Speaker 1: of stinks done in it, and and say like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you should probably not pick up the phone. And again
Speaker 1: they're the ones providing the service to allow you to
Speaker 1: get calls in the first place. It's not great, but
Speaker 1: that's kind of you know how technology can be, right,
Speaker 1: It's we can create these amazing tools that open up
Speaker 1: incredible potential possibilities. But it also means that people who
Speaker 1: are looking at the system from a differ and perspective
Speaker 1: may find ways to twist it to benefit themselves at
Speaker 1: the expense of the rest of us, which again kind
Speaker 1: of stinks. So yeah, this is one of those topics
Speaker 1: where while I say I love all things tech, I
Speaker 1: don't love spoofing. I think it's uh. At best, it's misleading,
Speaker 1: and at worst it is it is predating upon vulnerable populations,
Speaker 1: which I don't think is cool at all. I hope
Speaker 1: you enjoyed that episode about spoofing and color I D
Speaker 1: I apologize once again for not having a brand new episode.
Speaker 1: I was actually working on one that was going to
Speaker 1: be a short episode. In fact, it wasn't gonna be
Speaker 1: one of those fifty minute epics. It was gonna be
Speaker 1: maybe a half hour, maybe not even that, but uh
Speaker 1: it's it's about a an invention created by one of
Speaker 1: the United States founding fathers, and because of the technical
Speaker 1: issues I've had, I haven't been able to finish it.
Speaker 1: Hopefully I'll be able to do that for Wednesday's episode
Speaker 1: because it's just a fun topic. It's a little different
Speaker 1: from what I typically cover on tech Stuff, but I
Speaker 1: thought it would be nice to get away from all
Speaker 1: the social networking platforms and all the wireless communications companies
Speaker 1: and all that kind of stuff and to to look
Speaker 1: back at something a little a little less high tech
Speaker 1: but still really intriguing. So hopefully I'll be able to
Speaker 1: get back on that once I figure out these little
Speaker 1: technical glitches, and we'll have a brand new episode on Wednesday.
Speaker 1: If you have suggestions for topics I should tackle in
Speaker 1: future episodes of tech Stuff, please reach out to me.
Speaker 1: You can do so on Twitter. The handle for the
Speaker 1: show is tech Stuff hs W, or you can download
Speaker 1: the I Heart radio app. It's free to download, free
Speaker 1: to use. You can navigate over to tech Stuff by
Speaker 1: putting it into the little search bar and you'll see
Speaker 1: a little microphone icon pop up on that page. If
Speaker 1: you use that microphone icon. You can record a voice
Speaker 1: message up to thirty seconds in length and let me
Speaker 1: know what you would like to hear in the future.
Speaker 1: And again, we'll have new episodes as soon as I
Speaker 1: get this darn computer fixed. I think my dog got
Speaker 1: on it and decided to start, you know, surfing for
Speaker 1: cat videos or something. I don't know. I'll figure it out,
Speaker 1: but until then, I'll talk to you again, really soon.
Speaker 1: Y Text Stuff is an I Heart Radio production. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart
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