A man who lies to himself, and believes his own lies, becomes unable to recognize truth, either in himself or in anyone else, and he ends up losing respect for himself and for others.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
If you listen to some people, they claim they will restore trust in phone calls while simultaneously making boatloads of money for themselves by managing AI-powered lists of who is naughty and who is nice. The making of the money is more certain to happen than the restoring of the trust, as evident from the contents of this round-up of recent news about the naughty lists that telcos use.
Texan broadcaster WFAA reported last month about the travails of Dallas by Definition, a market research business that has been organizing focus groups for 35 years. Scheduling focus group meetings became a challenge when T‑Mobile began playing audible scam warning messages to any T‑Mobile customers dialing or receiving calls from Dallas by Definition.
The number you are calling has been identified as likely a scam.
It’s recommended you hang up now.
This is only a recommendation, so there are no legal consequences when a phone operator behaves like this. It is not like anybody might be hurt by a mistake like this, could they?
When our calls won’t go through… people not responding to our calls, calling back… that’s our lifeline for our business.
Corporate records indicate that Dallas by Definition has only 19 employees as well as being a certified women-owned business, so perhaps T‑Mobile calculates that their closure would not represent a significant loss to the economy or the local community.
From what I have seen, many people who have jumped on the ‘restore trust’ bandwagon have a clear sense of priorities:
- Serving the needs of the big enterprises that will pay them well.
- Serving the needs of the big enterprises that will pay them well.
- Nothing else.
To be fair, they tend to use different phrasing when talking to politicians and the public. Even so, you might expect a consumer-oriented telco like T‑Mobile to promptly fix the mislabeling of calls that are damaging a legitimate business.
I got the runaround. They just would not put me in place with the right person to resolve the issue.
Oh dear. Frustrated with T‑Mobile’s intransigence, the owners of Dallas by Definition turned to the local news team at WFAA for help. It is funny how some businesses only deduce how to ‘restore trust’ after their failings are broadcast on television. WFAA’s intervention suddenly made it easier for T‑Mobile to remove the inaccurate warnings. T‑Mobile also helpfully explained that the technology they use ‘occasionally’ flags legitimate numbers. How reassuring! And how frequent are these ‘occasional’ errors? We will never know, because nobody takes responsibility for independently monitoring the error rate for the naughty lists managed by the three US corporations that dominate the call labelling market.
In our next story, one of the top people at US business Numeracle shared insights on LinkedIn about incorrectly labeled calls on both Verizon and T‑Mobile. Keith Buell works at Numeracle as their General Counsel and Head of Global Public Policy. Numeracle’s business model is centered on correcting and avoiding flaws in call labeling, so it could be argued that Keith is not impartial. Nevertheless, if mislabeled calls are being received by one of the top American experts in mislabeled calls, that probably means a lot of other people are also receiving mislabeled calls. The story begins with Keith getting a call out of the blue…
Earlier today, my T‑Mobile phone displayed “Scam Likely” as a call came in. Out of professional curiosity, I answered. The caller said he was calling from Verizon about returning cable TV equipment. The rep did not phish for personal information and provided Verizon’s main number (800-437-4966) to call back with questions. Since I had recently canceled my Verizon cable TV subscription and had not returned the equipment, the call seemed legit.
This was another case of T‑Mobile applying a scam warning to a legitimate business.
I called back the number that had called me, not the Verizon main number, and received T‑Mobile’s scam warning before the call connected. It rang through to a call center, where an agent answered as Verizon. He asked for my telephone number, pulled up my account, and gave me the name of a legitimate Verizon store where I could return the equipment. He also identified a website used by a Verizon vendor handling equipment returns. This was a real call by a Verizon-authorized vendor, yet T‑Mobile labeled it as a scam.
But the good news for T‑Mobile is that a rival telco screwed up worse than them. This may seem difficult to believe, but Verizon warns customers about calls from their own equipment return partner.
I ran the number through Numeracle’s Number Check platform and found it was not just T‑Mobile applying a label. Verizon is labeling its own equipment return vendor as Potential Spam for calls to Verizon customers. Of the big three, AT&T is the only one not labeling this vendor as #spam or #scam.
There would be real-world consequences for consumers if they respected these erroneous warnings.
I’m glad I answered this call despite the scam label; otherwise, I might have been hit with a $350 charge for failing to return the equipment.
The third story in this round-up was easy for me to research because it relates to spam I receive from one of the American corporations responsible for the labels applied by T‑Mobile. An old business email address was obtained and is being circulated by a different American business without my consent; this data is then purchased by marketing professionals hired to promote anti-spam services! Marketeers will mindlessly include Commsrisk in long lists of websites they hope to use for free publicity in different regions. Here is the full text of one of the auto-generated spam emails I received recently, but with the names redacted.
Hi Eric,
I wanted to see if you’d be open to meeting with XXXX XXXXXXX, CEO of XXXXXXXX, for a conversation on how carriers are responding to the rapid escalation of phone and text scams, including spoofing and AI-driven impersonation.
XXXX works closely with operators like T-Mobile, AT&T, and Deutsche Telekom and can offer a carrier-side view on how scam mitigation is evolving from compliance-driven tools (like STIR/SHAKEN) into core network security. He can also share a perspective on recent regulatory developments, including the FCC’s latest FNPRM, and what they indicate for consumer protection in 2026.
We recently announced a partnership with Deutsche Telekom to expand branded calling into Germany.
XXXX can address topics including:
- How carriers are using predictive analytics and real-time detection to counter increasingly sophisticated, AI-enabled scams.
- What “beyond STIR/SHAKEN” looks like globally, and why branded calling and identity are becoming infrastructure rather than add-ons.
- How tightening caller ID and scam rules are pushing scam protection to become built-in network security for both consumers and enterprises.
As enterprises and SMBs lose billions annually to scams and missed calls, carriers are under growing pressure to solve this at the network level. I believe XXXX would be a valuable source on how the industry is addressing these challenges.
Please let me know if this would be of interest. Thank you.
Best,
XXXX XXXXX
Hard questions should be asked about the lack of scruples.
- These people got my email address from a business that obtained it and supplies it to others without consent. What does that say about attitudes towards spam?
- They lazily offered me an interview with their CEO without even bothering to check if I routinely criticize STIR/SHAKEN and the other insular garbage spouted by firms like this.
- Shame on Deutsche Telekom for a lot of empty talk about protecting privacy while doing business with them.
American firms that have monetized methods of tackling scams are now keen to publicize their services through websites like Commsrisk because they are trying to expand in Europe. They have maximized the revenues they can generate from the big US mobile operators so the only way to keep pleasing their investors involves spreading their tentacles to other rich countries, even if they cannot be bothered to research what foreigners who know the telecoms industry think about the effectiveness of STIR/SHAKEN. (Hint: it is not what some American insiders want them to believe.)
Europe’s best defense against aggressive marketing is the same as it has always been: choose not to follow the American path of permitting a massive number of business-to-consumer calls. Very few telemarketing calls overall = reduced risk of spam and scam calls = very little revenue for the firms managing the naughty lists. But that also means no big payday for Deutsche Telekom and other telcos. If consumer protection was the actual priority then the USA would change its laws to prohibit many types of business-to-consumer calls which their government and regulators have always tolerated but which have been banned in Europe and elsewhere. Since the election of Trump, the new leaders of the US Federal Communications Commission have not even acted upon the minor reforms surrounding consumer consent for telemarketing calls that had been drafted by their predecessors. And I hardly need to explain why no telco is going to lobby for tougher restrictions on business-to-consumer calls.
We should not be confused about who is currently setting the agenda for ‘consumer protection’ in the telecoms industry. It is not people with experience of fraud management. It is not people who care about consumers. It is people who want an increase in business-to-consumer voice traffic, just like they milked A2P SMS to compensate for the precipitous decline in P2P SMS. Nobody offers solutions like these out of their concern for consumers, just as they do not offer interviews with CEOs out of a desire to help Commsrisk. Labelling is their way of increasing pick-up rates for business-to-consumer traffic, and they will use the argument that increased labelling means governments should relax the rules about which business-to-consumer calls should be allowed, so that the expectations of Europeans are lowered to match those of Americans.
And what happens if the labels are wrong? They may promise mistakes only happen ‘occasionally’, but nobody in the USA has a clue about the statistics. The firms that manage the naughty lists have been allowed to police themselves. If they make mistakes relating to calls in other countries, perhaps involving languages that are foreign to their US workforce, who will be in a position to check how often those errors occur, or demand compensation for the resultant losses to businesses and consumers? Nobody.
As often occurs, money is being grabbed before necessary rules and regulations have been established. The common retort of American businessmen is that Europe has too many rules and regulations already, despite the obvious downsides caused by the unregulated free-for-all within the USA. The hectoring of these businessmen means you will not find anyone representing the GSMA, the CFCA or the MEF who will caution against control over call labels being handed to corporations that are not subject to any meaningful scrutiny concerning the accuracy of their data. Call labelling promises to restore trust! And reduce crime! And it will also make money for telcos! What could possibly go wrong?
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, ‘Make us your slaves, but feed us.’
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
WFAA’s news segment about the mislabeling of calls to and from Dallas by Definition can be watched below.
