WEBVTT - Spoofing and Caller ID 0:00:04.400 --> 0:00:07.800 Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from I Heart Radio. 0:00:12.080 --> 0:00:14.960 Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, 0:00:15.120 --> 0:00:18.120 Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with I Heart Radio 0:00:18.239 --> 0:00:21.159 and a love of all things tech. I say that 0:00:21.239 --> 0:00:23.200 a lot, but then I always have to qualify it, 0:00:23.360 --> 0:00:25.360 and this is gonna be another one of those episodes. 0:00:25.360 --> 0:00:27.400 So today I thought I would talk a bit about 0:00:27.480 --> 0:00:32.400 color I D, spoofing and robo calls. Mostly color I 0:00:32.479 --> 0:00:34.839 D and spoofing robot calls, I think I'm gonna have 0:00:34.880 --> 0:00:37.600 to say for another episode. But here in the United States, 0:00:38.080 --> 0:00:42.559 the major telecommunications companies, those being Verizon, T Mobile, and 0:00:42.640 --> 0:00:45.600 A T and T now have to work together to 0:00:45.680 --> 0:00:48.640 fight spam calls due to a mandate from the Federal 0:00:48.640 --> 0:00:54.040 Communications Commission or f c C. Now, the too long 0:00:54.480 --> 0:00:58.560 Didn't Listen message behind this, as opposed to too long 0:00:58.640 --> 0:01:02.120 Didn't Read is the goal is to eliminate spam robocalls 0:01:02.160 --> 0:01:04.440 going to your phone, so that you don't act like 0:01:04.480 --> 0:01:07.360 your phone is a bomb about to go off every 0:01:07.400 --> 0:01:10.240 time it rings. But to understand why this is necessary 0:01:10.319 --> 0:01:12.680 and how it all works, we have to go much deeper. 0:01:12.840 --> 0:01:18.600 So if you, dear listener, are of a certain age, 0:01:18.959 --> 0:01:21.199 you might remember a time when we didn't all carry 0:01:21.240 --> 0:01:24.040 smartphones around with us all the time. You might even 0:01:24.080 --> 0:01:27.720 remember a time before we even carried simple cell phones 0:01:27.840 --> 0:01:31.120 with us. In fact, some of you might remember being 0:01:31.160 --> 0:01:34.840 on a telephone handset that was tethered to a phone 0:01:35.319 --> 0:01:37.759 that was mounted to the wall, or sitting on top 0:01:37.800 --> 0:01:41.000 of an end table or something. And back in those days, 0:01:41.200 --> 0:01:44.360 dear friends, if someone called you, you really had no 0:01:44.400 --> 0:01:48.920 way of knowing who that someone was. I know, it's terrifying, 0:01:49.000 --> 0:01:52.520 right the phone rings, and there's no way to know 0:01:52.880 --> 0:01:57.120 who or what is on the other side. Could it 0:01:57.200 --> 0:02:00.800 be Grandpa Joe and he's found a golden ticket. Could 0:02:00.840 --> 0:02:03.320 it be the local food bank calling to see if 0:02:03.400 --> 0:02:06.920 you'll volunteer this year. Could it be a wrong number? 0:02:07.520 --> 0:02:10.280 The only way to find out was to answer the phone, 0:02:11.040 --> 0:02:13.919 or if you were a fancy person, you might let 0:02:13.919 --> 0:02:17.080 the call go to an answering machine. Side note. The 0:02:17.080 --> 0:02:19.680 answering machine traces its history all the way back to 0:02:19.760 --> 0:02:22.800 the nineteen thirties, but when I was growing up in 0:02:22.840 --> 0:02:26.840 the seventies and eighties, they were still relatively uncommon from 0:02:27.040 --> 0:02:29.160 most of the people I knew. But by the mid 0:02:29.240 --> 0:02:31.840 eighties that that had totally changed, and we started seeing 0:02:31.960 --> 0:02:36.840 commercials for like novelty answering machine outgoing messages I used 0:02:36.840 --> 0:02:40.040 to be a thing. There was this incredible pressure to 0:02:40.160 --> 0:02:43.720 create the perfect outgoing message to convey to those calling 0:02:44.200 --> 0:02:48.079 that you had a personality. But I digress, let's get 0:02:48.080 --> 0:02:52.920 back on track. Many answering machines would play incoming messages 0:02:53.200 --> 0:02:56.520 out loud on a loudspeaker as someone was making the message, 0:02:56.560 --> 0:02:59.519 which meant that you could use an answering machine to 0:02:59.600 --> 0:03:02.400 screen your calls, and a lot of people did so. 0:03:02.560 --> 0:03:05.320 If you had anxiety about answering the phone, you could 0:03:05.360 --> 0:03:07.919 just wait for the answering machine to activate and then 0:03:08.080 --> 0:03:10.160 see if the other person on the other end of 0:03:10.240 --> 0:03:12.480 the call was going to wait around long enough to 0:03:12.480 --> 0:03:16.040 actually leave a message after hearing You're hilarious and yet 0:03:16.080 --> 0:03:20.480 incredibly effective outgoing message. Then, upon recognizing the voice, you 0:03:20.520 --> 0:03:22.919 could choose to either interrupt the machine by picking up 0:03:22.919 --> 0:03:25.960 the phone and having the call initiate, or just letting 0:03:25.960 --> 0:03:30.320 it go. Simpler times really not that color I D 0:03:30.720 --> 0:03:35.440 wasn't a thing back then. The foundation of color i 0:03:35.520 --> 0:03:37.760 D technology has a history that dates back to the 0:03:37.840 --> 0:03:41.200 late nineteen sixties and to really understand all this, we 0:03:41.200 --> 0:03:43.880 should take get another step back and just talk about 0:03:44.040 --> 0:03:47.920 phone calls in general, and we'll build from there. So 0:03:47.960 --> 0:03:52.080 when Alexander Graham Bell made his first call, arguably not 0:03:52.400 --> 0:03:54.720 the first call, but that's a story for another time, 0:03:55.360 --> 0:03:58.000 it was a direct line from his station to that 0:03:58.080 --> 0:04:01.520 of his assistant, Thomas Watts, and there was no need 0:04:01.680 --> 0:04:04.720 to route that call anywhere. It was a straight road, 0:04:04.760 --> 0:04:09.760 if you will, from one point to another. Now, let's 0:04:09.760 --> 0:04:12.160 say we've got a group of four people and we 0:04:12.200 --> 0:04:14.640 want to connect these four people with phone lines so 0:04:14.680 --> 0:04:17.080 they can talk to each other on the phone. We 0:04:17.120 --> 0:04:20.360 could do this directly as well. Right, A simple way 0:04:20.560 --> 0:04:23.760 to draw this out would be just draw four points 0:04:23.760 --> 0:04:28.120 as corners of a square. Uh. Those corners represent our 0:04:28.200 --> 0:04:32.320 four phone friends, and we draw straight lines from each 0:04:32.360 --> 0:04:35.120 point to each other point. So what you end up 0:04:35.160 --> 0:04:38.159 with is a square with a couple of diagonal lines 0:04:38.279 --> 0:04:41.960 crossing through the center, and boom, you've got your four 0:04:42.040 --> 0:04:45.599 person network. Each person has a direct line to each 0:04:45.680 --> 0:04:48.599 other person in the network. But as we try to 0:04:48.680 --> 0:04:51.719 add more people to a system like this, we quickly 0:04:51.760 --> 0:04:55.480 see the limitations that we face. Each new connection means 0:04:55.520 --> 0:04:59.159 we have to establish cables between that person and every 0:04:59.200 --> 0:05:03.280 other person on the network. This gets expensive and complicated 0:05:03.360 --> 0:05:07.599 and messy and unsustainable. A phone network in which every 0:05:07.600 --> 0:05:09.839 single person with a phone has a direct line with 0:05:10.080 --> 0:05:12.960 every single other person with the phone is just impossible. 0:05:13.000 --> 0:05:15.440 You wouldn't even be able to move around because of 0:05:15.440 --> 0:05:19.240 all the cables everywhere, and so an important development in 0:05:19.240 --> 0:05:21.839 the history of the telephone system was the creation of 0:05:21.880 --> 0:05:26.920 the local exchange. The local exchange is a centralized point 0:05:27.200 --> 0:05:30.960 that you dial into, and then the exchange could switch 0:05:31.000 --> 0:05:33.520 on a connection between your line and the line of 0:05:33.560 --> 0:05:36.120 whomever it was who wanted to call. So in the 0:05:36.200 --> 0:05:39.440 early days of telephones, this was done with actual human 0:05:39.480 --> 0:05:43.520 beings sitting at a switchboard and manually plugging cables into 0:05:43.600 --> 0:05:47.360 complete calls from one person to another. So now rather 0:05:47.440 --> 0:05:51.479 than having direct connections with every other phone in existence, 0:05:51.800 --> 0:05:55.120 you really just needed a direct connection from your phone 0:05:55.560 --> 0:05:58.960 to an exchange. This cuts way back on the amount 0:05:58.960 --> 0:06:02.000 of cables that you needed in order to create a network. Now, 0:06:02.120 --> 0:06:05.320 this works fine for local calls, like you know, within 0:06:05.360 --> 0:06:08.800 a city, everyone can connect to that one local exchange, 0:06:09.279 --> 0:06:12.320 But the word local gives us a hint that there 0:06:12.400 --> 0:06:17.000 isn't one single exchange for every phone line out there. Now, 0:06:17.200 --> 0:06:20.800 local exchanges will cover a specific region, but beyond that 0:06:21.320 --> 0:06:26.600 you have other local exchanges. And to connect these exchanges together, 0:06:26.800 --> 0:06:30.320 phone companies laid out what we're called trunk lines. These 0:06:30.320 --> 0:06:34.719 are cables capable of carrying multiple phone signals simultaneously, which 0:06:34.760 --> 0:06:37.400 is a good thing too. Otherwise a single long distance 0:06:37.400 --> 0:06:40.159 call would prevent anyone else from making a similar sort 0:06:40.160 --> 0:06:44.560 of call between you know, those two specific exchanges. The 0:06:44.600 --> 0:06:48.040 networks grew organically, connecting to one another and forming what 0:06:48.080 --> 0:06:52.080 we call the public switched Telephone network or p st N. 0:06:52.960 --> 0:06:55.200 You could look at it as a sort of hierarchy 0:06:55.640 --> 0:06:59.360 as more of the world built out phone systems. At 0:06:59.360 --> 0:07:01.640 the very body him of this hierarchy, you had your 0:07:01.720 --> 0:07:05.960 individual landline phones the stuff, and homes and offices and 0:07:06.120 --> 0:07:09.000 phone booths and stuff like that. We used to have 0:07:09.160 --> 0:07:12.480 these things called phone booths, Superman, which change in them 0:07:12.600 --> 0:07:16.080 doesn't matter. One level up from this level, and you 0:07:16.160 --> 0:07:18.400 have your local exchanges, right, These are the ones that 0:07:18.440 --> 0:07:21.560 connect local calls to each other. And as I said, 0:07:21.600 --> 0:07:23.920 in the old days, this was done with human operators 0:07:23.960 --> 0:07:28.120 moving physical plugs into physical outlets to complete circuits and 0:07:28.160 --> 0:07:30.800 switch on a phone call, but didn't take long before 0:07:30.800 --> 0:07:35.080 the complexity of phone systems necessitated innovation to create automated 0:07:35.120 --> 0:07:39.200 ways of handling this. One level up from local exchanges 0:07:39.560 --> 0:07:44.240 are your trunk exchanges. The trunk exchange is to local exchanges, 0:07:44.480 --> 0:07:48.480 as local exchanges are two individual land lines. The trunk 0:07:48.520 --> 0:07:52.000 exchanges allow the various local exchanges within a country to 0:07:52.040 --> 0:07:55.840 connect to one another. A level above the trunk exchanges, 0:07:55.880 --> 0:07:59.560 you have international gateways, which interconnect the phone system of 0:07:59.560 --> 0:08:02.880 one kind tree with other countries. Often you end up 0:08:02.920 --> 0:08:07.160 having super long cables connecting these, including cables that run 0:08:07.480 --> 0:08:11.400 under the ocean. You know, there's cables under the Atlantic 0:08:11.480 --> 0:08:15.520 that connect Europe to North America, for example. All right, 0:08:15.600 --> 0:08:18.600 so now let's get a bit more complicated by throwing 0:08:18.680 --> 0:08:23.280 cellular phones into the mix. Cell phones communicate to sell towers, 0:08:23.720 --> 0:08:25.680 which you can think of as being kind of similar 0:08:25.680 --> 0:08:29.160 to the local exchange I was talking about earlier. So 0:08:29.240 --> 0:08:33.319 cell towers are essentially antenna, and the cell phones communicate 0:08:33.400 --> 0:08:38.360 with cell towers through electromagnetic radiation, specifically radiation that falls 0:08:38.400 --> 0:08:41.760 into the microwave frequency range. But they're not the same 0:08:41.800 --> 0:08:45.240 microwaves that we use to zap our popcorn and microwave ovens. 0:08:45.280 --> 0:08:48.560 It's not that level of frequency. It's also a very 0:08:48.640 --> 0:08:52.280 low wattage that we use for cell phones now. The 0:08:52.320 --> 0:08:55.600 microwave acts as a carrier wave, and I've talked a 0:08:55.600 --> 0:08:57.840 bit about carrier waves in the past with stuff like 0:08:58.000 --> 0:09:02.240 radio signals. Each phone is using a slightly different frequency, 0:09:02.240 --> 0:09:05.480 otherwise you would run into issues with phones interfering with 0:09:05.520 --> 0:09:09.640 one another. All right, So cell phone towers are at 0:09:09.640 --> 0:09:13.320 the heart of the cells that make up a service area. 0:09:13.800 --> 0:09:16.520 One really clever thing about this approach is the handshake 0:09:16.640 --> 0:09:19.640 that happens as you move across a region. So you 0:09:19.679 --> 0:09:21.960 can be on a phone call and you can be 0:09:22.160 --> 0:09:24.600 let's say, in a car, and you pass out of 0:09:24.640 --> 0:09:28.120 the range of one cell phone or cell tower rather 0:09:28.520 --> 0:09:31.000 and you enter into the range of another, and your 0:09:31.040 --> 0:09:33.720 call continues on as if you had a solid connection 0:09:33.800 --> 0:09:37.280 on a single cell tower the entire time. I'm gonna 0:09:37.360 --> 0:09:39.200 leave it at that, because getting into the tech of 0:09:39.240 --> 0:09:41.640 all that would really get us off course. This episode 0:09:41.640 --> 0:09:44.600 would end up being like three hours long. But maybe 0:09:44.640 --> 0:09:47.080 I'll do a full episode about how cell towers work. 0:09:47.240 --> 0:09:49.360 It is really fascinating because they have to be very 0:09:49.400 --> 0:09:52.840 careful with the frequencies they use in order to both 0:09:52.960 --> 0:09:56.000 service everyone who's within range of a specific cell tower 0:09:56.360 --> 0:10:01.280 and not interfere with anyone who's at a neighboring cell tower. Anyway, 0:10:01.320 --> 0:10:05.480 Connecting the towers is the Mobile Telephone Switching Office or 0:10:05.679 --> 0:10:09.560 mt s O. Each service provider has its own mpt 0:10:09.880 --> 0:10:13.160 s O in regions, So if the person you're talking 0:10:13.200 --> 0:10:15.800 with is in the same region, such as like in 0:10:15.840 --> 0:10:18.200 the same city as you, and they happen to be 0:10:18.320 --> 0:10:21.400 on the same carrier, one mt s O pretty much 0:10:21.440 --> 0:10:24.640 handles everything. The call signals go through the cell towers 0:10:24.679 --> 0:10:27.600 to one another through the m t s O, but 0:10:27.679 --> 0:10:30.840 the calls are not made directly phone to phone. It's 0:10:30.840 --> 0:10:34.240 not like your phone is acting like a radio directly 0:10:34.360 --> 0:10:37.400 with the other phone. Now, if you're calling someone who's 0:10:37.440 --> 0:10:39.720 on the other side of the country, it's a little 0:10:39.720 --> 0:10:42.439 bit different. Typically, your call would go from your phone 0:10:42.480 --> 0:10:44.880 to a cell tower, and from the cell tower to 0:10:45.000 --> 0:10:48.520 the local mt s O of your carrier, then from 0:10:48.559 --> 0:10:52.280 there to the p s t N that big public 0:10:52.400 --> 0:10:55.880 switching telephone network, and that would then route your call 0:10:56.280 --> 0:10:59.200 to the mt s O relevant to whomever it was 0:10:59.280 --> 0:11:02.600 your calling on the other end. So even cell calls 0:11:02.679 --> 0:11:06.560 can rely upon the old phone system. Getting back to 0:11:06.600 --> 0:11:09.520 color I D. Back in the nineteen sixties, there was 0:11:09.559 --> 0:11:13.199 an engineer named Theodore Paris Cavacos it still is, I mean, 0:11:13.240 --> 0:11:16.199 he's still alive today. He developed a way to send 0:11:16.240 --> 0:11:21.040 electronic data over telephone lines. In v he filed and 0:11:21.120 --> 0:11:25.520 received a patent for a quote decoding and display apparatus 0:11:25.520 --> 0:11:28.920 for groups of pulse trains end quote. This would become 0:11:29.120 --> 0:11:32.240 the basis of color I D, in which the telephone 0:11:32.280 --> 0:11:36.360 of the person making the call will send data relating 0:11:36.400 --> 0:11:40.800 to the phone number of that originating call along with 0:11:40.840 --> 0:11:43.640 the call itself, and a device on the other end 0:11:43.720 --> 0:11:48.400 on the receiving end could get this information, decode it 0:11:48.520 --> 0:11:52.840 and display the incoming phone number and thus identify the 0:11:52.920 --> 0:11:57.720 incoming call. Other engineers around the same time period began 0:11:57.760 --> 0:12:01.040 to develop similar technologies and approaches, and so the early 0:12:01.120 --> 0:12:03.559 days of color I D are a bit muddled, as 0:12:03.559 --> 0:12:06.800 there are numerous patents assigned to different inventors, some of 0:12:06.880 --> 0:12:10.440 which acknowledged the existence of other inventions as prior art. 0:12:11.520 --> 0:12:15.319 One of those inventors was Katsuo Hashimoto for a quote 0:12:15.600 --> 0:12:20.040 Telephone Information displaying device end quote. The abstract of that 0:12:20.120 --> 0:12:23.040 patent essentially lays out what we think of as color 0:12:23.120 --> 0:12:25.920 I D. So I'm going to read to you the 0:12:26.040 --> 0:12:31.040 abstract of this patent. Here he goes a calling parties 0:12:31.120 --> 0:12:34.880 telephone number displaying device, in which, while the telephone set 0:12:34.920 --> 0:12:38.240 of a subscriber is ringing in response to calling signals 0:12:38.240 --> 0:12:41.320 from a telephone exchange office, the telephone number of a 0:12:41.400 --> 0:12:45.640 calling party and information are displayed on digital display units 0:12:45.679 --> 0:12:50.479 at high speed before lifting the handset. Accordingly, the subscriber 0:12:50.520 --> 0:12:52.920 can determine whether or not he should answer the call 0:12:53.040 --> 0:12:56.440 before picking up the handset. Thus his privacy can be 0:12:56.480 --> 0:12:59.880 protected from a variety of telephone troubles such as wrong 0:13:00.080 --> 0:13:03.439 number and nuisance calls. The display is maintained as it 0:13:03.520 --> 0:13:06.720 is even if the handset is put back after the talk, 0:13:07.080 --> 0:13:09.640 but it will be cleared automatically upon reception of the 0:13:09.679 --> 0:13:12.280 next call to display the telephone number of the next 0:13:12.360 --> 0:13:15.280 calling party. When the subscriber picks up the handset to 0:13:15.280 --> 0:13:18.640 make a call, the internal circuit is automatically changed to 0:13:18.679 --> 0:13:23.079 display a telephone number dialed by him. That's it. So 0:13:23.160 --> 0:13:26.439 that patent pretty much explains that the invention would allow 0:13:26.440 --> 0:13:31.160 telephones to send and receive signals between successive ringing signals. 0:13:31.160 --> 0:13:34.280 So in other words, when the phone company isn't sending 0:13:34.280 --> 0:13:37.840 the signal to make the receiving phone ring, it could 0:13:37.880 --> 0:13:41.880 send the signal containing information about the origin of that call. 0:13:42.280 --> 0:13:45.360 And that's why if you're using a landline and you 0:13:45.480 --> 0:13:48.160 get a phone call with a system that had caller 0:13:48.240 --> 0:13:50.600 I D, you would only see the I D stuff 0:13:50.640 --> 0:13:54.040 pop up after the first ring happened. The method for 0:13:54.160 --> 0:13:58.400 sending the information was a type of frequency modulation that's 0:13:58.520 --> 0:14:01.440 changing the frequency of a signal in order to encode 0:14:01.480 --> 0:14:06.480 information on it, called frequency shift keying or f s K. 0:14:07.040 --> 0:14:10.080 Applying f s K to a carrier signal alters that 0:14:10.160 --> 0:14:12.600 carrier signal in a way that can be interpreted on 0:14:12.640 --> 0:14:15.040 the other side in some manner. So in the case 0:14:15.040 --> 0:14:17.880 of color I D, that some manner is that the 0:14:17.880 --> 0:14:22.240 transmitting side can encode the phone number in that carrier wave, 0:14:22.720 --> 0:14:26.280 and the receiving side can decode that carrier wave and 0:14:26.320 --> 0:14:29.560 get back at that number. FSK is used in lots 0:14:29.600 --> 0:14:32.960 of applications, not just Color I D. But for our purposes, 0:14:33.160 --> 0:14:35.240 it's just important that we know that this is the 0:14:35.280 --> 0:14:37.840 methodology that the phone company is used to transmit the 0:14:37.840 --> 0:14:40.800 info of Hey, this is the phone number that just 0:14:40.960 --> 0:14:43.760 dialed you. But this wasn't going to be a service 0:14:43.800 --> 0:14:47.080 that phone companies were going to throw in for free. No, 0:14:47.760 --> 0:14:50.160 this would be something that companies would charge for on 0:14:50.280 --> 0:14:53.320 top of the normal phone bill. Now, the story goes 0:14:53.360 --> 0:14:56.440 that the phone companies at first planned to offer this 0:14:56.600 --> 0:14:59.680 service as an audio one. So, in other words, you 0:14:59.680 --> 0:15:02.200 could opt into this service and you would get a 0:15:02.280 --> 0:15:04.880 verbal alert when you picked up the phone telling you 0:15:05.000 --> 0:15:09.360 the phone number that the call originated from. UH. And 0:15:09.600 --> 0:15:11.920 the phone companies were hoping to charge on a per 0:15:12.120 --> 0:15:15.360 use basis, so every time you did this you get 0:15:15.440 --> 0:15:18.960 charged a little amount. That's not how things eventually turned out. 0:15:19.560 --> 0:15:21.840 We'll get into color I D a little bit more 0:15:21.920 --> 0:15:24.240 after the break, and then we'll talk about the systems 0:15:24.280 --> 0:15:35.640 that enable spoofing. But first let's take that quick break. So, 0:15:35.760 --> 0:15:38.960 phone companies were licensing technologies to enable color I D 0:15:39.080 --> 0:15:41.600 in the nineteen seventies, but it wasn't until the mid 0:15:41.680 --> 0:15:45.080 nineteen eighties that we saw the first pilot program of 0:15:45.120 --> 0:15:48.160 color I D here in the United States. That took 0:15:48.160 --> 0:15:53.400 place in Orlando, Florida, where you know, the characters from 0:15:53.400 --> 0:15:56.240 Book of Mormon really wanted to go, and that happened. 0:15:56.280 --> 0:16:00.920 Back in four Bell South offered a service call touch Star, 0:16:01.160 --> 0:16:03.800 and Color i D was one of the features that 0:16:03.840 --> 0:16:07.200 you could opt into with Touch Star. It was called 0:16:07.280 --> 0:16:11.240 Custom Local Area Signaling Service, but it would become known 0:16:11.400 --> 0:16:14.000 as Color i D. Now, if you weren't around in 0:16:14.040 --> 0:16:16.600 the nineteen eighties, you might be surprised to hear that 0:16:16.680 --> 0:16:19.320 the emergence of color i D was viewed with suspicion 0:16:19.440 --> 0:16:23.200 from multiple fronts. In the US. Politicians were asking if 0:16:23.240 --> 0:16:27.520 perhaps Color i D would violate wire tapping laws, and 0:16:27.600 --> 0:16:30.600 others were likening it to tracing a phone call, kind 0:16:30.600 --> 0:16:32.640 of like what you see in movies, where you know, 0:16:32.680 --> 0:16:36.960 the police are trying to track a specific criminal as 0:16:36.960 --> 0:16:39.600 they talk on the phone. But in fact, it was 0:16:39.640 --> 0:16:42.720 such a controversial subject that it took more than a 0:16:42.840 --> 0:16:46.240 decade for all fifty states in the US to actually 0:16:46.280 --> 0:16:50.800 adopt the technology. California held out the longest. California only 0:16:50.800 --> 0:16:54.680 incorporated color i D in nineteen nine, six twelve years 0:16:54.760 --> 0:16:57.520 after Orlando, Florida got in on it. And by the 0:16:57.560 --> 0:17:00.800 mid nineties, there was another big con learned to think about, 0:17:00.840 --> 0:17:04.080 and that was privacy. We weren't quite at the same 0:17:04.160 --> 0:17:06.560 level that we are now, not by a long shot, 0:17:06.960 --> 0:17:11.399 where the average medicine has generated tons of information about 0:17:11.400 --> 0:17:15.120 themselves that can link back to them. But we were 0:17:15.359 --> 0:17:18.280 entering into an era in which certain companies were building 0:17:18.280 --> 0:17:22.919 out comprehensive databases about consumers, and so you started to 0:17:22.960 --> 0:17:28.200 see companies building out profiles or even dossiers on people. Now, 0:17:28.320 --> 0:17:31.040 if you want to be charitable, you could argue this 0:17:31.119 --> 0:17:35.520 helped those companies serve their customers more effectively. But if 0:17:35.520 --> 0:17:37.919 you want to be cynical, you could say that this 0:17:38.000 --> 0:17:41.359 gave companies more information to leverage while trying to sell 0:17:41.400 --> 0:17:45.040 goods or services to a potential customer. The truth is 0:17:45.160 --> 0:17:50.159 probably somewhere in the middle. But what concerned privacy advocates 0:17:50.240 --> 0:17:53.840 is that a business could theoretically rely on caller I D. 0:17:54.440 --> 0:17:56.639 So if someone were to call in, let's say that 0:17:56.680 --> 0:18:00.439 someone needs to talk to a customer service rep, then 0:18:00.680 --> 0:18:03.360 that rep could do a reverse phone number, look up 0:18:03.520 --> 0:18:07.280 on that call, and pull up a full profile of 0:18:07.320 --> 0:18:10.480 the person calling. And there were a lot of privacy 0:18:10.480 --> 0:18:14.080 implications that were concerning actually kind of seems quaint in 0:18:14.119 --> 0:18:16.520 comparison to what we deal with today. At least if 0:18:16.560 --> 0:18:20.040 you look into how private information gets handled these days. 0:18:20.800 --> 0:18:23.919 For that reason, Telephone Company is introduced an option to 0:18:23.960 --> 0:18:28.120 allow customers to opt into color I D blocking. Now, 0:18:28.160 --> 0:18:30.359 if you did this, it meant that your number would 0:18:30.359 --> 0:18:34.040 not be displayed when you called someone else. You were 0:18:34.080 --> 0:18:37.960 effectively blacklisted for color I D. And so you know, 0:18:38.000 --> 0:18:40.399 if I opted into this and I called you, you 0:18:40.440 --> 0:18:43.600 would probably see some sort of message like color unknown 0:18:43.840 --> 0:18:48.120 or something similar to that, which probably means you wouldn't 0:18:48.160 --> 0:18:51.200 likely pick up my call. To be fair, you probably 0:18:51.200 --> 0:18:53.879 wouldn't anyway, I'm kind of a drag to speak to 0:18:54.000 --> 0:18:57.399 on the phone. It took time for attitudes around color 0:18:57.480 --> 0:19:00.520 I D to change, but we did on viously see 0:19:00.560 --> 0:19:05.640 that happen today For many people, including myself, we don't 0:19:05.680 --> 0:19:08.359 pick up the phone if we don't recognize the number 0:19:08.440 --> 0:19:12.040 that's displayed on our phone screen, and that means that 0:19:12.200 --> 0:19:14.919 if the call comes up is unknown or something along 0:19:14.920 --> 0:19:18.280 those lines, we're not likely to answer it. We'll probably 0:19:18.359 --> 0:19:20.879 let it go to voicemail. In fact, these days, I 0:19:20.920 --> 0:19:23.760 feel a sense of anxiety even if I do recognize 0:19:23.800 --> 0:19:26.800 the number, which is weird because I was one of 0:19:26.800 --> 0:19:29.040 those folks who back in the eighties and nineties. I 0:19:29.160 --> 0:19:32.000 love to talk on the phone. Now it seems kind 0:19:32.040 --> 0:19:34.399 of odd. I have a small group of friends and 0:19:34.440 --> 0:19:37.320 family with whom I'll chat with on the phone, but 0:19:37.400 --> 0:19:41.600 they are truly the exception and not the rule. Anyway, 0:19:41.800 --> 0:19:44.600 Color I D made the transition from being viewed as 0:19:44.680 --> 0:19:49.200 being invasive or creepy as to being necessary in order 0:19:49.240 --> 0:19:52.720 to function as a human being in the modern technical age. 0:19:53.320 --> 0:19:56.040 And there's a related thing I should talk about quickly 0:19:56.080 --> 0:19:59.120 for folks in the United States, and that's the calling 0:19:59.280 --> 0:20:03.800 name President Haitian. That's c NAP or Color Name Delivery, 0:20:03.840 --> 0:20:07.880 that's c NAM systems. These are systems that can provide 0:20:07.920 --> 0:20:11.199 a name to go with a phone number. So with 0:20:11.320 --> 0:20:14.240 these systems, you don't just get a telephone number. You 0:20:14.320 --> 0:20:19.320 get a person or business name that is associated with 0:20:19.400 --> 0:20:21.639 that phone number. So here's how it works. In the 0:20:21.720 --> 0:20:24.879 United States. I'd say we've got two people. We've got 0:20:25.000 --> 0:20:28.639 Max and Chris. And Max is in New York and 0:20:28.760 --> 0:20:32.639 Chris is in California. What's more, Max is a T 0:20:32.840 --> 0:20:36.000 mobile customer and Chriss carrier is a T and T. 0:20:36.560 --> 0:20:39.600 And both Max and Chris are using smartphones, so they're 0:20:39.600 --> 0:20:45.000 on cellular networks. So Max calls Chris. Max's smartphone is 0:20:45.040 --> 0:20:49.399 connected to a nearby cell tower, nearby T Mobile cell tower, 0:20:49.880 --> 0:20:52.960 and that routes the call through T Mobiles MT s 0:20:53.000 --> 0:20:56.520 O in that particular region, and the empty s O 0:20:56.680 --> 0:20:59.679 then routes the call through the psd N, the Public 0:20:59.720 --> 0:21:04.080 swim Ching Telephone network, and that then routes the call 0:21:04.240 --> 0:21:06.520 to the A T and T M T s O 0:21:07.119 --> 0:21:10.280 all the way out in California. That connects to a 0:21:10.359 --> 0:21:14.760 cell tower that's in Chris's area, and it sends the 0:21:14.760 --> 0:21:18.359 call to Chris's smartphone. Now it's at this stage, the 0:21:18.440 --> 0:21:21.080 A T and T stage, where we see the system 0:21:21.240 --> 0:21:25.000 call up the name. So, in other words, the name 0:21:25.080 --> 0:21:28.439 look up is on the receiver's end. It doesn't originate 0:21:28.520 --> 0:21:32.439 from the phone that's making the call. It's all down 0:21:32.480 --> 0:21:36.680 to whichever carrier is in operation on the receiving end, 0:21:37.359 --> 0:21:41.160 and A T and T sees that Max's phone number 0:21:41.200 --> 0:21:43.679 is coming in, so it recognizes the number. But to 0:21:43.720 --> 0:21:48.120 associate that number with Max as a person that requires 0:21:48.119 --> 0:21:50.560 a database look up. And because Max is a T 0:21:50.760 --> 0:21:54.000 Mobile customer not an a T and T customer, a 0:21:54.119 --> 0:21:56.520 T and T technically has to pay a very small 0:21:56.640 --> 0:22:00.560 fee called a dip fee to look up the information 0:22:00.600 --> 0:22:03.840 and then to send that on to Chris. Then Chris 0:22:03.840 --> 0:22:07.639 sees that Max is calling and picks up, or Chris 0:22:07.680 --> 0:22:10.399 ghosts Max. I don't know what their friendship looks like, 0:22:10.480 --> 0:22:14.080 to be honest, my point being that the name associated 0:22:14.080 --> 0:22:18.200 with a phone number isn't magically connected to that number. Rather, 0:22:18.240 --> 0:22:21.760 there are these massive databases of phone customers out there, 0:22:21.800 --> 0:22:25.520 typically at the local level, and these databases match numbers 0:22:25.560 --> 0:22:29.280 two names. There's no universal database out there that has 0:22:29.400 --> 0:22:32.480 every name and every number, So phone companies have these 0:22:32.520 --> 0:22:35.880 ongoing agreements to charge these small dip fees to dip 0:22:36.040 --> 0:22:40.600 into the databases and retrieve relevant information. All right, So 0:22:40.640 --> 0:22:43.080 that's Color I D and I think it's pretty easy 0:22:43.160 --> 0:22:46.159 to understand from a high level how it works. But 0:22:46.240 --> 0:22:49.520 then what about spoofing. Well, spoofing is a practice in 0:22:49.520 --> 0:22:52.119 which the number that pops up on a color I 0:22:52.240 --> 0:22:56.040 D system is not the same as the actual number 0:22:56.280 --> 0:22:59.840 making the call, And there are legitimate reasons to do 0:23:00.040 --> 0:23:02.720 this that have nothing to do with scams or crimes. 0:23:02.800 --> 0:23:06.840 So spoofing as it stands is not illegal on its own. 0:23:07.480 --> 0:23:11.280 It's only illegal if you're using spoofing to purposefully mislead 0:23:11.400 --> 0:23:14.960 or scam people, then you can face a pretty big 0:23:15.000 --> 0:23:18.720 fine in the United States. But spoofing is just a thing, 0:23:19.520 --> 0:23:21.880 not illegal. So let me give you a scenario where 0:23:21.920 --> 0:23:25.719