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Stopping Robocalls with Aaron Foss

Easy Prey
“This problem is really complex. It’s really complicated and nuanced. It is the perfect breeding ground for both fraud and great stuff for customers.” - Aaron Foss Share on X

Finding a solution to stop spam calls to you, your family, or your business isn’t easy. We may not win this war, but we don’t want the government making this decision for us. We can make it more manageable in the meantime.

Today’s guest is Aaron Foss. After winning the FTC Robocall Challenge in 2013, Aaron started Nomorobo. Since then, Nomorobo has stopped billions and billions of unwanted robocalls and spam texts from reaching our phones, and it was acquired by Applause group in August 2023. Aaron has been featured in The New York Times, Wired, CNN, CNBC, Fox News, and countless other media outlets. He has testified in front of Congress, not once, not twice, but three times.

“Robocalls have this negative connotation. They can actually be good. We want the prescription and appointment reminders. But what we don’t want are the illegal and/or unwanted robocalls.” - Aaron Foss Share on X

Show Notes:

“Spoofing is nothing more than setting caller ID, which is completely open by design.” - Aaron Foss Share on X

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Transcript:

Aaron, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today.

Thanks for having me. Really appreciate this.

Can you give myself and the audience a little bit of background about who you are and, I guess it's not what you're currently doing, but what you have been doing?

Currently, I'm doing nothing, but that's very, very different from my career. I'm the quintessential serial entrepreneur. I have started and built five companies, two which got acquired, a few of them that didn't see the light of day. I'm just like an idea and an execution guy; I get an idea, run with it.

By training, my undergrad was in information technology, so I'm a programmer. At the same time, I also got my MBA. I've always been at this intersection of technology and business. I just love it right there.

Most of my career has been the same way. If you can manage both of those worlds, it's a really fun place to be.

So many people ask, “What are your hobbies?” I can't answer that. The only thing I like doing is building businesses and making money. I don't even like the spending money part. I just like making it. I just think that part is so fun to get in the head of the consumer, solve the problems, and do it in a scalable, technological way.

Which company do you think is the most recognizable by consumers?

Definitely for me, it was no Nomorobo. That was the one that got the most publicity. We've stopped a lot of crime, and a lot of people getting taken advantage of. But oddly, actually, I think what still haunts me in a good way, and I have it if anybody's watching on video, is the Wing Dipper. This was my first invention. It's actually a cup for dipping Buffalo wings in dressing. It has the round part for the drumstick and then a wide part for the flat wing.

I love it.

This is the one that everybody's like, “So, how's that Wing Dipper going?” Of all those things, those are probably the two that I'm most known for.

I take the Wing Dipper is doing well.

No, actually. Again, I don't know how much time you got on the podcast. I was eating wings at a bar. I got frustrated that I couldn't get enough dressing on it. I realized the problem was the shape of the cup. One thing led to another. I was on a show called American Inventor. It was Shark Tank before, being Shark Tank launched the product.

It was good. It was available in bars and restaurants all over North America, Canada, and the United States. When I started Nomorobo, I had to make a choice of the eagle that chases after two rabbits, misses them both. I decided to double down on Nomorobo, sunsetted Wing Dipper. Obviously, 10 years later, it was the right call.

Good to hear. Nomorobo, did you start it because you were annoyed with all the phone calls you were getting?

That's what everybody says. Like, “Oh, how many of these?” Honestly, I didn't even know what a robocall was at the time. I didn't have a landline. I guess I was in the early 30s when I started it.

My last company had just been acquired by Groupon. This was in 2013, and I planned to take time off like I'm doing now. I don't know. I can't not solve a problem, whether it's chicken wings or, at the time, the FTC called it the robocall challenge. They put out a contest, a competition. It was a $50,000 prize for anybody who could try and solve this robocall problem.

What they really wanted was to find people that weren't in telecom. Again, remember a decade back, the problem is still huge, but it was even worse a decade back. They're the organization that is supposed to solve them, but they wanted new eyes on the problem. I had done a lot of development work with Twilio and telecom. I was on BBS way back in the day. I just ate the stuff for breakfast.

My business background, if you read between the lines of the competition, they wanted something that could go around the carriers because the carriers just weren't cooperating. I had a really unique way of doing that. Spoiler alert: I won.

I love it. Can you talk a little bit about the background of the robocall industry? I guess we have to take another step back. Robocalls, which are legitimate businesses, telemarketing for the purpose of an actual business. Probably what more people are more used to now is the robocalls associated with scams and who knows what else. Let's set the stage. I imagine when you first started doing this, a lot of it was telemarketing calls versus scam calls.

Yeah. The way I look at everything also is that everything is on a continuum between good and bad, the evil and horrible, whatever that may be. Robocalls usually have a negative connotation, but they're actually really good. You want to get your prescription reminders, your doctor's office, and those kinds of things. They do get lumped together, but what we're talking about here are illegal and/or unwanted robocalls.

Robocalls usually have a negative connotation, but they're actually really good. You want to get your prescription reminders, your doctor's office, and those kinds of things. -Aaron Foss Share on X

With CAN-SPAM and you can unsubscribe, there are a lot of laws around that. Technically, there are a lot of laws around the robocalling field also. But in so many words, and we can talk a little bit about the evolution of this, is that there are just a lot of unwanted calls, both then and now that may or may not be illegal.

I guess this whole robocall piece started with the TCPA, which was a law that was started in the late 80s and didn't get implemented until the early 90s that made these automated dials illegal. It's 2024. You go back 30 or 40 years. Literally, there was no internet back then. The automated dialers were these boxes. It was basically mechanical. Everybody needed hardware and everything, and that's what they were trying to stop.

Look what happened. Internet connection got overlaid over the entire globe. Anybody can plug anything in, start pumping out millions of these calls for virtually nothing. What do you expect is going to happen? Fraud, fraudsters, scams are just going to run in there. They're going to be rampant. I guess I'm going a little bit. That at least set the tone for everybody who's listening here.

That sets the tone, I think, great. In the beginning of it, when you first started getting involved, the bulk of it was pseudo-legitimate business calls.

Yeah. In 2013, Rachel from cardholder services, that was the stereotypical robocall. You'd pick up, it was, again, a prerecorded message, and it was all about debt reduction. It's all the same variations on that.

We'll also push those over into dubious products. We'll consider that more spam than scam, again, debt consolidation. Maybe they are legitimate. If you see a lot of the vehicle warranties, you see them advertised on TV, you get robocalls about them. There are affiliate lead generators and things like that.

Again, this industry is so interesting because you can slice and dice it, but probably what we want to really talk about is the scams, not necessarily the spam. We're taking the political robocalls out. Again, we can talk all about that, but it's so many words.

The ones that are making the biggest impact on people are the outright scams. Again, “I'm calling from Chase,” or the grandparents scam. A lot of elderly people are getting scammed. I think that that's the one that most people are, because who are these people that are perpetrating this, and how do they live with themselves?

That is a very legitimate, good question. Let's go back a couple of years. Why did the systems that the telephone providers put in place not stop the problem back in the 80s, 90s, 2000s, 2010s?

The key to understanding why stopping the robocall problem is so difficult is because you can't analyze the content of the message. Something like email spam filtering, you can put in a set of software and rules. You can go and analyze text message spam. You see that. It's called store and forward. But with a voice call, the only information that you have is the sending phone number, maybe some upstream stuff like carrier, but that's very little, and then volumetric space on that.

Again, the phone carriers can’t, luckily, or they shouldn't be listening to every call. That's why everybody's like, “Well, we can stop email spam. Why can't we just do it in voice?” Again, because of the United States, because of the privacy, and things that we have, it's such a third rail that if the carriers just keep trying to punt, because if they get it wrong, it's so heavily regulated, they don't want to stop calls.

Since Alexander Graham Bell invented the phone system, their job is about delivering calls, quality, reliability, getting every call to you. Scammers come on out and then they're like, “Wait, we have to do the exact opposite of that.” They're just not set up to do that, which is why something like Nomorobo has been so successful.

I suppose the margin of error in the sense that would be allowable for the phone company of, “Oh, we decided not to connect this call to 911,” that's a little bit of liability. Oh, it was a legitimate call from the doctor's office telling you you have this condition and you immediately need to go to the ER; those are not the calls that you want to accidentally block.

That's absolutely right and like one man's trash is another man's treasure kind of thing, one person sees it as spam, another person wants it. There are a lot of judgment calls. Exactly, they're just going to error on it. Especially if it's opt in versus opt out, it's going to be really difficult. If you didn't even notice, so number of blocked calls, but the carriers will identify it for you. You'll see spam, likely scam, and everybody's like, “Well, why can't they just stop the call for me?” You just hit on it. They can't because that would be bad if they get something wrong.

If you opt into something, we always talk about how you're like you're answering service. Again, you're totally cool, but this question does scam and spam, robocall protection, belong at the carrier level? Obviously I'm biased here, but I think there's something to be said that basic stuff of again, if you've identified it, these are obvious scams, yes, that level. As you move up that chain, nowadays, there are a lot of products out there that can help. Way back in the day, there was literally nothing.

What's the difference between how carriers identify spam or scam likely and how Nomorobo was doing it?

The main differentiators: the carriers and even the government, human reports, don't answer the phone. That's what they always say. Don't answer unknown numbers. I don't know. I think even as time goes on more and more, you have to. Everybody's like, “Well, don't do that. Doctor, it hurts when I go like this.”

When you get over 50, you realize you need to take a lot more of those phone calls because you go to the doctor more. You've got kids in school. You've got all sorts of things where you're getting calls that you don't expect.

Right. We would talk about pets and the pet sitter. Again, you're calling the contractor or again, life-threatening, God forbid. My uncle had some health issues. He was always calling from all, when we go into the hospital, various numbers. Again, that and then you leave a voicemail, but then you have to call the person back.

That being said, the way that the carriers have been able to do that is they basically look at—I have something called the campaign registry, which we'll get to in a second—the sending phone number and try to find out patterns. “Hey, is that calling a lot of people? Is it a new number? Does it have a reputation?” Things like that. And then they would go and try and label it.

With Nomorobo, one of our secret weapons, in addition to all the value metrics, we were analyzing hundreds of millions of calls, seeing those phone numbers coming in, we built the world's largest commercial honeypot. What we did is we bought all of these phone numbers from the carriers—phone numbers, lines, whatever you want to call them—that were just so overrun with spam, that they couldn't give it out to their customers.

If any of the listeners or viewers have seen it, they get a new phone number, the first call there is a robocall. They’re going to call up AT&T or Verizon and say, “Give me a new number,” or whatever. Or if they're getting so many robocalls, like I say, like, “Give me a new number.” We went and bought all of those misfit numbers.

Because we were able to answer them, we were able to set up bots that would play along. We were able to transcribe that data, categorize it. Within just even one phone number, we could go and slam down every single call from that number because we had proof of that.

Carriers have an inkling. When you throw over it, the volumetrics information, then you have user reports. It's not perfect; it gets things right, it gets things wrong, and whatever. Layering it that way, waiting for different pieces on every single call that came in, we were able to do it way better than any of the carriers and any of the competition out there.

That's interesting that you got to build bots to talk to the bots.

I always joke about that. This is even before AI. Again, a decade ago, AI wasn't a thing, but I would joke, this is like Skynet. This is Terminator. My bots are fighting their bots. There's no human being. They're just talking to each other, and no human being is in the middle of it. Actually, it's not about bullets flying or anything like in the movies, it's really just about trying to steal a couple of dollars from your bank account.

With phone number spoofing, has that made this process more difficult?

Yeah. When we talk about spoofing, I think the same deal. Let's set the stage on that. Everybody thinks like, “Well, that phone number is tied to an actual device, a mobile line, a landline.” It turns out that actually when caller ID—remember once we're calling about spoofing an ID phone number, it was a walled garden. It was AT&T. The bell ran it, so there was no security around it. They would basically just set the calling number. Again, it wasn't even a big thing. Then they had the caller ID boxes and things like that, but it was completely unprotected.

If I wanted to write a letter to you, address it from my neighbor, and drop it in the mail, you would get it, and you would think it came from my neighbor. That's all that caller ID was way back then. -Aaron Foss Share on X

The way I describe it, it's like the return address on an envelope. Technically, is it a crime to change? I don't know about postal service law, I don't know. In so many words, if I wanted to write a letter to you, address it from my neighbor, and drop it in the mail, you would get it, and you would think it came from my neighbor. That's all that caller ID was way back then.

They've been trying to put on stir and shaken, which we can get into definition there. All that is is a certified caller ID. Again, on the text message side, we've been talking about campaign registry, where companies can register what they're going to be sending out and things like that. In so many words, spoofing is nothing more than setting that caller ID that is completely open. That's the way the system was done, like an original sin. If we can go back in time, we would say have some sign-in.

Even nowadays, SSL on the web, you see that little lock that used to mean, “Oh, that's a trusted site.” Now, it's not. It just means that the connection between you and that server is secure. All that even stir and shaken if you get the little check. All it means is that that person's confirmed that it makes it easier to trace back, but it still doesn't say anything about the content of the call, and the contents of the call is where the real big problem comes in.

This could be the legitimate originator of a scam call.

There we go. Exactly. That's exactly right. They'll tell you who it is and they're like, “Yeah, I'm pushing out the scam and spam.”

It's funny that you're drawing the analogy to the little lock on the browser, because that used to be when an SSL certificate cost you a thousand dollars a year. It was a significant barrier to entry for a churn-and-burn scammer, because you’ve got to scam quite a bit to be able to afford the certificate, and they did verifications. Nowadays, it's three seconds.

You just said barrier to entry. In any system, if there's no barrier to entry—usually we talk about this in business—you can open up a burger stand, I can open up a burger stand; there's very low barrier to entry. We're not going to start our own search engine. We're not going to be competing, or our own phone. Those are very high barriers to entry.

Whenever there's an area that is a low barrier to entry, not only are unsophisticated people going to come in, but the scammers are going to run right there. -Aaron Foss Share on X

Whenever there's an area that is a low barrier to entry, not only are unsophisticated people going to come in, but the scammers are going to run right there. The higher the barrier to entry, the more in general you are protected from it, which is why this problem is so rampant.

I personally think that it is the biggest fraud vector potentially in the world because it's so open, and it's incredibly difficult to plug that hole because that's the way the system was designed. It was designed to be resilient. The phone system was designed so that if you blow up a part of it, it'll just get routed around. That's great, but it also creates a lot of problems.

The thing that makes it so resilient and wonderful—the system like the Internet—is the thing that also makes it a problem when things go bad.

Again, back in the day, local long distance, you would have to go through your phone bill. “Hey, who do we know in Marchmont?” Going through there. I was in Staples the other day. Somebody was trying to send a fax, and they were asking me how much it was going to cost. The woman behind the counter said, “Well, if it's local, it's $2 a minute. If it's long distance, it's $4.” I was like, I haven't heard that. Nobody thinks that way anymore. There's no such thing.

Back in the day, though, there was this local and long distance. Again, I want to say it hasn't kept up, but it's just no wonder that there are all these. Especially when it's again, global, these scams usually don't originate domestically, but they obviously come back here. That's exactly how this problem became so widespread. It's a flaw in the system.

The great thing is we can make free, local, and long distance. I can pick up the phone and call literally anybody on the planet, be connected with them instantly, and it costs me virtually nothing. A scammer can pick up a phone or a computer, and call anyone or hundreds or millions of people for virtually nothing. Yeah, you take the good, you take the bad. That's how we got here.

Was the rise of Voice over IP the big launching point for these things becoming volumetric, in a sense?

That's exactly right. If there was no VoIP, robocalls or scam calls would not nearly be because, again, barrier to entry. You would have to have all these machines. They would have to be in a certain place you could regulate it easily. Because of the nature of VoIP, internet, and all these connected networks. Again, you can't put the genie back in the bottle. The toothpaste doesn't go back into the tube, so we just have to deal with it with having, again, protection on that side. Absolutely that's how we got here.

In order to understand how you got here, we have to look back at decades of this technology. It's so funny. I don't know if you look at any telephone history or anything like that, all of these things, caller ID was touted as this amazing thing.

It will solve everything.

Exactly. Answering machines and voicemail, all this stuff. Now, we get all those things, but there's also, it's just, “Oh, my God. I got to get another robocall.”

Where do you see this industry going? More government regulation, more solutions like Nomorobo, more AI answering our phone calls for us?

A combination. This might be a cop out. People talk to me all the time. “The government should be able to just do something.” This is a really complex, complicated problem. Say what you want about politics and politicians. They are doing all they can. They really are. They're having hearings.

Again, I've spoken in front of Congress three times. They are working—the FCC, the FTC. Again, I don't care if you're red, blue, left, right, up, down, or anything like that. One thing we can all agree on is nobody wants unwanted calls. Nobody wants spam calls.

The politicians, the legislators, the regulators are doing everything they can, but it's a hard problem to stop. The carriers are not exactly incentivized to stop these calls. They're going to do what they have to, of course. But as we talked about before, the liability, if they get something wrong, if they had their way, they just wouldn't do it.

If you think about it with email spam protection, no law or anything like that that your email provider has to give you spam protection. Is that a selling point? Of course. Why is Gmail so popular? Arguably it has one of the best spam filtering. There are also the third-party apps and things.

Again, it's a really nuanced thing, because even when you go and look at the backup, when Nomorobo first came out, the only thing we protected were landlines because both of the handset manufacturers—Google, Apple, iPhone, and Android—wouldn't allow developers to build call-blocking apps.

Again, nowadays we look at it like it makes it. Again, privacy concerns. Both of those companies—and they are two of the largest companies on earth, potentially two of the largest companies that have ever existed—are the gatekeepers. OK, great.

I built Nomorobo because I won a competition from the FTC, and our reputation was on the line with every single call that we stopped or allowed through. We weren't just going to go and screw that up for a couple of dollars. Some of the competitors, and then the competitors got acquired by companies that weren't as privacy-focused. That got covered.

When you look at all of it, I think the politicians need to continue to make as many laws against it as possible in the right way. I have advocated for them taking all of this hodgepodge of weird things that have been band-aid on. Take it all, throw it out in so many words, and make everything opt in. If you just say that every one of these commercial calls is illegal, unless you have opted in, and again, I'm sitting here in an armchair court, it's easy for me to say. But whatever.

They're doing what they can. I think the carrier needs to do what they can, give as many tools to their customers as they can, and then there is a certain responsibility on the personal side. Either educate yourself, use the services or inexpensive services like Nomorobo. When I first started, we had basic. It's very, very simple, $2 a month, used a blacklist approach. Then we launched Max, which used a call answering, at least the heuristics, that used a lot of AI. It was all call screener.

When we came out with that, there's a family plan for it. Again, this isn't a sales pitch, but the individual is $50 and the family plan is $80 for four lines. Again, you can protect your entire family for $20. Now, all of a sudden, since there's something accessible, people are like, “OK, I'm willing to do that to protect me and my family.” You can't just sit back and say, “No, I'm not going to do anything.” But yeah, really nuanced.

Literally, if everybody, including the individual all the way up to government regulators, lawmakers, and the media, getting the word out that it's not hopeless. You don't just have to not answer calls anymore. We're never going to win the war, but this is how we just at least keep it under control.

Keep it at a manageable level. If you can't answer this question, don't answer it. Running Nomorobo, were you getting calls from marketing organizations saying, “How can we get around your product? Can we pay to have our calls delivered?”

Yeah. The customer support team and the data team, I basically told them, “We look at our analytics, we have our honey pot, we have all the proof. You guys make the decision. I will stand behind you 110%.” But of course, there would be people who thought that they were dealing with some customer support person and everywhere else, but our team is empowered and I truly mean that. If they say it, I literally never reversed course, if anything.

“Let me speak to them.” “Fine, or we get all these legal papers.” I heard so many times, “Oh, if you don't take it off, you're going to sue me.” “Hey, totally understand. Here’s the email address. Send it on over, and we'll absolutely have our lawyers take a look at it.” I'm not saying that it was a challenge or anything like that, but that was just a scare tactic. I'm not going to be bullied. I'm not going to have my team be bullied.

You might be making legal calls, but they might be unwanted. When our customers hire us, they are saying, “We trust you to make that decision. We only want wanted calls.” Again, we can do that as an app provider, as a third party. A carrier can't do that. The government can't, shouldn't. You don't want the government telling you what calls you can receive. You do not want that. Trust me on this one.

All the political advertisement calls.

Guaranteed. Right, exactly. Everybody's going to be listening in on everything. They're going to be allowing. It's funny. It's ironic. On the robocalling side, the politicians carved out political robocalls. If that's not hypocrisy, I don't know what it is. “These are terrible. These are awful. Nobody should make them except for us.”

Except for us, yes. Are you familiar with the email blacklist, the DNS BLs from the late 90s and whatnot?

Sure, yeah.

Your service is classified under the same thing in terms of, “Well, you weren't technically blocking the calls, but the consumer entrusted you—the consumer was actually making the decision, not you guys, in a sense.” Is that how you get around the lawsuits?

Yeah. With the Spamhaus and the community blacklists around IPS for email servers and things, the industry organized itself. There are nonprofits. They figured out a way to do that because they were incentivized to do that. It was a better product and all those pieces.

On the telecom side, the carriers could never organize between the nonprofits. There were the different silos and where it's coming. Again, I keep on saying this, “Isn't it the same?” It's not. It really isn't.

When we talk about crime, yeah, we have a police force, but people still have firearms. People still have alarms and things like that. Just saying like, “Well, let's just get rid of crime.” Yeah, that's there. Exactly, poof. Just like that. It just doesn't work. Maybe this is why we're talking about this whole thing.

Maybe even, if there's one thing that your viewers and your listeners takeaway is that this problem is really complex. It's really complicated, it's complex, it's nuanced. It's the perfect breeding ground for both fraud, horribleness, and great stuff of being able to protect consumers and make better products, which I think is why I find it absolutely fascinating.

What were some of the craziest conversations your AI had with scammers and whatnot?

The bots that we built. My uncle is a little bit older, and he leaves me voicemails a couple of days, and he's allowed to. We love Uncle Steve. He would just continue to tell me everything that's going on in the day. I was like, “Well, hold on a second. This guy's giving me gold.” I literally took all those voicemails, chop them up, and made what we called the Stevie bot. It would just keep these guys on. Again, it was just because there was a lot of, “OK, right, wait, what?”

Again, keeping them on the line is not going to make the problem go away. We never tried to do it that way. What it allowed us to do was get a lot of recordings, then go and analyze the calls because, again, they were coming into company-owned. We can't do it on the consumer side, there's a wall there. We're never touching consumer lines, but our honeypot data, we can do whatever we want.

That gave us this view into, “How does the grandparent scam work?” Ten thousand calls an hour would come in. Easily, 10,000 calls. It was an hour a minute depending on where it was. It was this huge amount of calls that were coming on through. There was no way for humans to go and answer it. By putting the bots on, figuring that out, pulling out, that's how we were able to get our newest scam alerts that got out there. That was what was really important.

You go and search in the database for any expletives, that was just gold too where you're like, “OK, here's one.” Those were the funny ones or whatever. The ones that were the craziest ones were the ones that even our data team would listen to it and go, “Is this real?” They know certain—on the Medicare scams, they know your Medicare number, they know your phone number. Those were the ones that were craziest because we'd all look at each other and be like, “Is this legitimate or not?” If we couldn't figure it out, how was a regular consumer going to be able to figure that out?

Were the trends pretty cyclical in that you would get Medicare seasonally during open enrollment? You have those things that are calendar cyclical. What were some of the things that were cyclical that you maybe wouldn't think to be like—it was the grandparent scam was popular every January or every two years?

They were evergreen. There were the gifts that kept on giving to the scammers. Always Medicare. They didn't even matter, open enrollment or anything else like that. That was always there. Some of the solar has been around for forever, debt consolidation, financial kinds of things. Seasonally, the tax scams would pop up around tax time.

What was really more interesting to see was the spin still is being put on. We'll call it more macro trends. When cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, a couple of years back, when that was all over the news and things, all of a sudden, now there were a lot of robocalls and spam texts about Bitcoin. People were interested. They didn't know what was going on. As the popularity has gotten out of the mainstream, those calls are not as rampant.

Vehicle warranties, still huge. Solar has gone down a bit. Everybody who's gotten solar panels. It's probably gotten it right now. We'll actually back up. Maybe this was interesting. Let's talk about, actually, how some of these robocallers work. Everybody thinks that it's like the solar company just hiring a robocaller putting it in, but actually what happens is called lead generators.

There are these companies that put together these solar robocalls. They're the ones who go and pay for the company to make all these calls. When they get a lead, obviously not you or your family, but the neighbor calls, they go and sell that lead to a solar company, probably a legitimate or semi-legitimate company. The reason that they do this, not only because of money or whatever, is this plausible deniability. You're a semi-legitimate solar company. You find a marketing company.

“I'm just buying leads. I didn't know what they were doing.”

I don't know where they come from. Same deal like the vehicle warranty. Yeah, I see this one advertising on TV. This is what happens when they mix all those together. Maybe one of those, they use affiliates, they use lead gens. All of a sudden now, even if you call up, some of you are like, “Well, I'm just going to ask them who they're working for or whatever.” Those middlemen were really the big problems in this area.

If you want to get over to the actual scams, like the full-on, again, grandparent scam, anyone at the refund scam where they say Amazon, you need a refund, any of the ones where there's a virus on your computer, those frauds and scams are usually done by single boiler rooms, usually overseas. They are usually contracting and making those calls themselves. Then they're just basically hiding their tracks by navigating through the network, because they also know, even if you trace it back, the chance of getting them, it's like ants in the summer, they're going to pop right back up.

Maybe that's it if we're going over to the, again, the legitimate, semi-legitimate, the spam, all the way over to those ones. We’ve seen it all the time, the people are losing their life savings. They won the lottery or Publishers Clearing House. In general, those come out of actually Jamaica. I don't know why certain areas of the world have taken on certain scams, but that's the nature of this industry.

It is an industry.

It is. It's a business. Usually these guys are really good business people. They're illegal businesses, and that just goes to show you how well these work. Everybody says, “Well, why they keep on still calling me?” We all hear about this.

I've been talking about this for a decade, and yet they're still there. They're still there because they work every single day, probably in the time that we've been talking. At least one person has gone, “Oh, my God, my Amazon account,” or, “Oh my, there's a virus on my computer.” Right now, they're getting taken for hopefully only hundreds of dollars.

Once you're scammed, from there, you're on this mark list where then they're going to keep on calling you and trying to get more and more money out of you because it works. It's social engineering. These guys are great at their… Share on X

Once you're scammed, from there, you're on this mark list where then they're going to keep on calling you and trying to get more and more money out of you because it works. It's social engineering. These guys are great at their jobs. They're probably better at their jobs than maybe even all of us. We try. We can't stop all of them. I guess they can't get all of them. But when they get a fish on the hook, they reel that thing in, and they take that person for all that they're worth.

Maybe this is a twist to it: Are there things that we can do not getting them on the phone and wasting their time, but making your telephone number less attractive, so to speak?

Again, I'm biased here. Simple answer: Use my product. The simple answer is no. It's not necessarily about us. We're not going to get scammed. Your listeners are not going to be the ones that get scammed, in general. We've all gotten pretty close and things, and I'm not saying it's like, but we know about these things […].

When these robocallers use tactics like they're threatening, there's urgency, or again, family members, when these robocalls are trying to get people to panic quickly to get caught, again, the grandparents scam for anybody who doesn't know, they call up and they say, “Grandpa or grandma,” and then the person goes, “Oh, yeah, either in jail, they were arrested, they have a ticket,” or whatever it may be, when you talk to people who have been victimized with the scam, they usually say, “Oh, no. When they called, they knew my grandson's or my granddaughter's name.” It's not actually what winds up happening.

What usually happens is they say, “Grandma,” and then the person says something like, “Oh, is that you, Jimmy?” And then he goes, “Yeah, this is Jimmy,” and the scammer takes it. That's social engineering. Now they know that they got somebody over there.

Making your number look different, no. Especially for older folks, we have to help them out and get more protection. For people who know it, at best, this is an annoyance. Don't give out your number to everybody. Even now, you walk into everywhere, the Old Navy, “What's your phone number? What's your phone number?” No, thank you.

In some other store, they're like, “Oh can I get your email?” I'm like, “Let's not make this a long-term relationship. I'm here to buy some bananas.” I guess there's an ounce of prevention, but that's only going to stop legitimate companies.

Again, Old Navy, do you want them to text you? Just don't even get into that habit. Do you want them to call you? No. Again, with all the data breaches and everything, no. Everybody's assuming that all of your data is out there, and now you have taken steps, and fortunately to protect yourself and to vote people into office who are going to help and to work with companies that are going to help protect you.

I guess the assumption is anytime someone claims to call you and they know your name, it doesn't mean anything.

There we go. We've been working on this pathway. The first part is if it's a known number in general, people are like, “Well, but they're spoofing.” Yes, of course, but on the edge there. Let's just take out the known numbers.

Now, an unknown number comes in, first thing, just get your guard up. Immediately know that if it's an unknown number. Got it. Does it mean it's bad? Does it mean it's good? No. Now what are they saying? What are they asking about? What data are you giving them? How can you say, “I'm not comfortable here. Let me call you back”?

Here's a really interesting example. They just have people that are domestic. They're usually here in the United States, people that have gotten out of jail, people that have very few options in life for ways to make a legitimate living. They go through that whole scam. What they say is you need to call my attorney at this other number and then give them my case number. There's usually another group, again, domestically, that's the masterminds behind that thing.

The first one was the lead gen group.

That's exactly right. They might get paid. I don't even know how that works. If anybody knows, reach out to me. The way that scam is working is it's disconnecting the organization and the group that's making those calls. It's also insulating the main group. If you just call up and say, “Oh, my grandson is in jail.” “Oh, what's his case number?” You can't just say one, two, three, four.

It almost becomes one of those choose your own adventure that unlocks a puzzle, a game, or something like that. Just to put it out, the sophisticated level, I'm sure they're buying lists of phone numbers of people, of landlines, of older people. They're not going to run a grandparent scam on somebody who is middle-aged. That's not going to be worth anybody's time. They're obviously taking data from these data breaches.

I actually heard stories that they'll buy lists from durable medical equipment. People that are selling wheelchairs, walkers, and things, they're just selling some of the data. Now they're targets and things. Even as I'm talking about, I guess there are some ways, but don't order a wheelchair. I don't know.

You do things like I do. I have different phone numbers for different uses. There are phone numbers that I will give people in less trusting situations, let's say.

One of our big partners is Burner. They implement Nomorobo on all their burner lines. Everybody has one phone number. You might need other phone numbers exactly like that. Is it going to prevent everything? Is it? I'm going to say, is it even worth it? Maybe to a point, but again, the only way that is foolproof is to have some answering service or somebody screening service and things like that.

All of these things, again, it's like an ounce of prevention, or 80/20 rule, 90/10. You can do all these things and maybe it's a little bit, or look at some of the new technology that are out there and really solve the problem. Again, it's under the person. Every person can make that decision. I turn off Nomorobo all the time when the contractors are calling. Inevitably, what happens always happens.

They can just turn it back on.

We remind you. Again, if you want to use the product, you want to use it, whatever. It doesn't matter to me. Whenever I turn it off because a contractor is coming or whatever, and I have to answer every call, and I answer the call, a goddamn robocall comes in. I was on the porch waiting, the guy was coming, boom, robocall. I don't know how they know. They don't.

Actually, perfect. Great. How do they know that you just bought from Amazon? Because everybody's just bought from Amazon. It's not even a joke, but how do they know? They don't know, they're just blasting these things out. It just happens to be the right time at the right place.

Here's a feature request for the company that you don't own anymore. When you disable it, you can set the amount of time that you're disabling it for.

I totally agree. It's one of the things. It reminds you after two hours or something, but you don't want to go and turn it back on. I would love that little reminder that says, remind me in what was that? It was something that was great. This is the part, I love that you're telling me that, but it also frustrates me.

I’ve got to start up a new company.

I have no control. Again, a guy like me, an entrepreneur at heart and maybe with some control issues, absolutely, boom, we're right there, I'm emailing you back and that we fixed it. When the company was acquired, most earnouts and transitions are three-to-five years. That wasn't even in the cards. I'm not even talking to anybody. That's not going to work well for anybody.

The company that acquired it originally said, “Can you stick around for a year?” I said, “That's also not going to be great for anybody.” When I'm in a place where I don't have control, it's not. Basically it was just six months. They have their view of it and the way that they want it. Again, they were a great company that is acquiring it. I stand behind them 100%. We had other options and all the other companies that were acquiring them didn't respect the consumer's privacy.

Exactly that now, I'm just a little bit powerless. If anybody else has any problems that they need to solve, reach out to me because I'd love to keep on talking about these things. As soon as I heard one of those, boom, we have a development team meeting. We're looking at it. Exactly. Let's change the reminder.

Is there anything about the scam calls that do get through that keep you up at night? Or an aspect of like, “Oh, I see a tidal wave coming,” what would that be?

I wish it was a tidal wave, honestly, because then we could stop it. If it was an asteroid that was coming, if it was like the robocall asteroid, AI and whatever, no. This is death by a thousand paper cuts. This is scammed by a thousand paper cuts. This is $200 here and $400 there. They hit the mother load and just yanked out $1.3 million out of somebody's life savings. That's what makes it even more difficult.

Again, even on the AI side, they've been doing pseudo-AI for years. If you’ve ever gotten one from scam charities where you hear the voice of a police officer, all that is is a soundboard. There's a call center somewhere overseas. There are a lot of people sitting there with headsets on. They're sitting in front of a computer, they're pushing buttons, and it's playing that initial question. You're like, “Are you a robot?” And then they go and look on their screen, they tap it, and they're like, “No, I'm not a robot.”

We'll call it pseudo-AI. It was just expensive AI. It wasn't artificial. That stuff has been around for a long, long time on the robocall. You know who should be worried? The overseas call centers. They should be worried that their jobs are going to be eliminated by using AI. Is the problem with us? No, I'm going to say it's with the robocallers, and good for them. Their life deserves to be a little bit more difficult.

When I was interviewing Doug, I was thinking back that it was one of those police charity calls. I have those turned off. But when I was taking the phone calls, I could always tell because it was the same voice. Even though they're like, “Hey, it's Bob, it's Steve,” it's all the same voice.

The thing that I thought that was funny was the call center background track started at the exact same time on every button. If it was a 10-second response, it was the exact first five seconds that was on the five-second response. I could hear the same voice, the same laugh in the background. I'm like, “Oh, that's interesting.” They got lazy.

The artifacts like AI. When you see somebody with six fingers in AI, you're like, “This is not real.” There's always going to be a tell. Again, you're much more sophisticated. Obviously your viewers and your listeners are more sophisticated, but again, some normal person who's just hearing that, how are they supposed to pick up on that?

The only way they're able to pick up on that is if they've already picked up the phone, at which point, if you're working, your attention has now gotten shot. If you're eating dinner, shot. If you're playing with your kids, shot. I joke it's a bowl of M&Ms with glass shards. I want an M&M. What are you going to do? You're going to stop eating that bowl of M&Ms and just let all the M&Ms go to voicemail.

That's why it's basically my voicemail is talking to your voicemail. You're asking great questions here. Again, I hope everybody that's listening to this is hearing why, after this whole thing when you get to the end of it, like, “Wow, I didn't realize that this problem was so difficult to solve.” It just seems easy. Everything seems easy. There are tells and there's technology.

I personally don't think anything will ever solve it. It won't. It's just like your immune system. The phone system needs an immune system. But that doesn't mean you're not going to get sick, you're going to get a cold. There are going to be pandemics that come on through. We'd all be dead if we didn't have an immune system. Again, I always looked at Nomorobo as an immune system for your phone because you need something. Because beforehand, you were just susceptible to every virus that would come on through.

Every little horrible nasty out there.

Yeah. Could you imagine? Nobody will be able to do anything. If your life looked like that, everybody would be in bed. I wouldn't recommend going out.

We were joking a little bit beforehand. I was saying I would never want to testify in front of Congress. It doesn't matter whether you're left or right. You watch a news clip, if you're on the opposite side, you can't get three words out of your sentence before somebody is screaming bloody murder at you. What was your experience testifying about this in front of Congress?

It's so funny that I'm thinking back. I won the Robocall challenge in April of 2013, and July of 2013 was when they asked me to testify. It was April, May, June, three months later. I was working on Nomorobo under wraps. It launched on October 1st.

Anybody can go and look up C-SPAN, go look up Nomorobo, go look up my name. You can watch that whole thing. It's funny when you look back at it, the carriers or their lobbying arm were literally and figuratively on the other end of the table. I'm there saying, “Hey, technology can help stop this problem.” They're over there basically saying, “No, it can’t. We're not going to do it. We shouldn't be able to have it.” We were polar opposites over there.

Again, as time went on, we got much closer. Again, I know all those people and that thing. What was funny was if you watch, I do a lot of public speaking. I like communicating, I like teaching people how to communicate. I had my whole opening remarks written out and everything. I was a part of Toastmasters, which helps you with public speaking and things.

When I was doing it, I said, my idea is called Nomorobo. They said, “You might want to explain it.” That's a play on no more robocalls, which people might not get the joke. I get them like, “OK, that's actually right.” If you watch, my idea is Nomorobo. It's a play on no more robocalls. I thought it would just go right on through. Best laid plans here.

Senator Claire McCaskill, I think she's on MSNBC, stops me in the middle of it. Again, go watch the video. I'm going to edit this, put it right on there. She's like, “We understand. We get the joke.” I'm just panicking. I've just been cut off.

She literally said, “People think we're idiots, but we're not. We get the joke.” Just watch my face, because I don't know what to do. I'm like, “Well, do I say nobody thinks you're an idiot”? Because then she's going to know I'm lying, or do I not? I just lean into the microphone and go, “Just making sure. I just want to make sure.” I just get right back on it. That was the only panic part.

In the first time also it's funny because I already have over 3000 emails on the mailing list that want to know when Nomorobo is coming out. Just a couple of months later on October 1st, I had over 30,000. Even just looking back, you could see from a business perspective, a startup perspective, the need was there.

The second time that I testified, obviously a little bit calmer, I knew what was going on. It was funny too because then also, they had competitors there. Again, we're all friends. We're still friends even to this day. Our enemy is not each other; our enemy is the illegal robocallers.

It was funny. The third time, this is old hat. I'm like going shaking hands. I know all the people. “Hey, how are you doing?” Whatever. There was another person who was her first time. She was freaking out. She was so nervous. She has a very high-ranking position, she just never testified. Here I am like some yucko, “Hey, how's everything going and everything?” It was really funny that I'm thinking back.

Anytime you give a talk, a speech, or whatever, if you are prepared, if you're the good guy or a girl, if you're on that side, and you're a human being that doesn't have 17 layers of legal, in general, I was just talking about the problem. I was talking about it from the way that we saw it, and I was giving my recommendations. I wasn't going to change anybody's mind, but overall, that's just, I think, the way that everybody is. I think if everybody communicated that way, there'll be a lot less people just screaming at each other. Thanksgiving dinners would probably be a lot calmer.

I'm sure they would. Wrapping up here, any final advice to consumers?

First is thank you. Thank you for getting the word out about all this. This problem is, again, so rampant and the fatigue. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people are looking and the newest episode of this comes on through, and it's like, “Oh, robocalls again. I know everything.” Everybody's just getting a little bit numb to everything.

Again, the way that you and all the people that cover this in a unique way, you know what? Listen, educate yourself, and then talk to other people. “Hey, you know those things? Everybody thinks it's what. Oh, yeah. I sang to them, I yelled at them.”

Actually, it's a serious problem. Again, they're free trials. Try ours, Try any of the other ones. Again, if a carrier is giving a better spam likely, the scam likely, give your money to them. There's very little difference nowadays in all of the carriers, except for these kinds of services they're putting on.

Again, take care of the people that are closest to you. Getting the word out on, again, unknown numbers. Don't panic. Everybody's like, “Well, I'm never going to answer this. This person called with my washing machine delivery. I listened to Dave Ramsey a lot. Morrison called up and said that I got an email that their data was breached and a data breach or whatever.” I get them every day, but she was calling up. She was in a panic. Then she thought it was a scam.

In so many words, what you want to tell somebody is take a deep breath. It's fine. It happens all the time, but all of our data is out. Obviously, lock your credit, do all those pieces, and take those steps. Panic doesn't help anyone. If anything, it makes it worse.

If I could get a couple of words out: 1. Don't panic. 2. Learn, educate yourself, talk to people about this in the right way. -Aaron Foss Share on X

If I could get a couple of words out: 1. Don't panic. 2. Learn, educate yourself, talk to people about this in the right way. Obviously, again, I'm biased, but I think that using a product like Nomorobo—again, we have a free trial. Try it on out. If it's great, roll it out to your whole family. Again, there's Robokiller. There are the ones that the carriers make.

Use other services in, again, the second line and things like that. In so many words, maybe I would just even just say, and I don't mean this in a way, but let's all just take responsibility but in a good way. Ten years ago, somebody saying, “Take responsibility. You’re blaming the victim.” You can't do anything like that.

The final end, if you find yourself in the middle of one of these, stop. Hope this doesn't happen, but if you find yourself that you're a victim of one of these scams, use your story to help other people. “Hey, I never thought it was going to happen to me, but it did.” Again, there's so much shame behind this because it's like, are people stupid?

Hope this doesn't happen, but if you find yourself that you're a victim of one of these scams, use your story to help other people. “Hey, I never thought it was going to happen to me, but it did.” -Aaron Foss Share on X

Nobody is stupid. Very smart people fall for the scams. The thing is is that these scammers are so good. It's not because they're smart, they just have really good systems. They know psychology, and they know all this. Maybe they suppose to reduce things to three bullet points, but maybe one of those things that somebody will just be like, “Oh, OK, after I listened to this, like, oh, that's actually really interesting, and maybe I can do something there.” That's just the way I see the world.

Again, the people that are on our end, the people that acquire the company, they're pouring more and more resources into it. I'm just a small guy. We had three full-time people and two part-time people for the whole thing, stopping hundreds of millions of robocalls just the way that I'm baked in. I just don't like big businesses. I was honestly keeping the company back a little bit. The company that acquired it is pouring more and more resources into it. They're doing really great.

I can only imagine when we talk in a year or two or something like that, what does it look like now, amazing stuff. Really just have hope. Really, don't panic. Don't be terrified. You can answer them on your phone and things like that, and then just do it that way. Keep on listening to these kinds of shows, learn about the new technology, and see what's out there. You could just be a better consumer. You can be a better person.

Cool. Aaron, if people want to get ahold of you, how can they reach out to you?

Again, company wise, I'm not with them anymore, but check out nomorobo.com. I highly encourage everybody to do that. If you want to connect with me personally, drop into my LinkedIn. Just search for Aaron Foss. You'll see, it says like Nomorobo. I'm more than happy.

If anybody is again on the entrepreneurship or the startup journey, I love helping people out. I've been through it. I have all of the scars to do that. Again, I'm not selling anything. I don't have a coaching program. I don't have books. I don't have anything. I just do this because I love helping people out. Again, I was so fortunate to be able to stop.

I don't know how many life savings I stopped from being stolen. Now, if there are other people who are like, “Hey, I have this idea, I don't know where to start, I don't know where to go, or I'm stuck,” that's probably the best way. I'll reply back to my personal email. Don't worry about bothering me; that's what I'm here for.

I love it. Aaron, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today.

My pleasure. Thank you for having me.

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