This website has a tremendous following amongst professionals but the volume of inbound traffic explodes when a wider cross-section of the public wants to know more about a topic than mainstream news providers will tell them. That phenomenon explains why the number of visitors during August was the third-highest total for any calendar month since the site began in 2006. It also helps to explain why August’s charts are dominated by slightly older stories which continue to be relevant to some recent news announcements.
A regular pattern has emerged where prosecutors, government agencies and some cynical vendors pretend that criminals risk severe punishment for bombarding the public with scam calls and messages. The reality observed through the pages of this website is that much of the apparent law enforcement activity occurs only for the sake of manipulating the media, and hence influencing public opinion. Enormous fines are announced, though public servants do not disclose the extremely low probability of any money will be collected. Companies and individuals are seemingly banned forever, but these bans are rendered irrelevant by the ease of creating new legal entities coupled with the lack of any real monitoring of individuals with a past record of profiting from illegal traffic. The government mandates the purchase of expensive technology, supposedly to identify crooks, but when no clear benefits materialize they dismiss the failure as proof that fighting crime is a game of whac-a-mole which they do not expect to win anyway. Old news media does not tell the truth about this delinquent pattern of behavior, but the world wide web means we can all examine the history of failure like never before, even if hundreds of well-paid officials who do not want the public to know what is really happening.
Some other older Commsrisk stories were revisited in unusual numbers during August when businesses stepped up their efforts to protect their public. Credit goes to those firms for being transparent about the need for improved privacy and security measures. Their efforts resulted in additional traffic to Commsrisk as unusual sources cited Commsrisk articles to explain the need for additional consumer protection controls.
All of this means August’s top ten does not reflect the popularity of the articles that were published during the month. August was a strong month for Commsrisk across all geographic regions and for all types of stories. However, this chart represents the growing awareness of routine gaslighting about the successfulness of efforts to reduce the abuse of phones by bad actors. The authorities still act as if they have the confidence of ordinary people. They may be right, but they are playing a risky game. The continuation of weak excuses for prolonged failure, when married to the recurring intention to deceive, will eventually lead to a scandal that somebody in the mainstream news will report accurately.
The following articles are ranked by the number of unique page visits during August.
- Why Does the US Media Refuse to Tell the Full Truth about Robocaller Roy Cox Jr?
- Another Joke Fine Shows US Authorities Do Not Take Illegal Telemarketing Calls Seriously
- Chief Target of New US Robocall Crackdown Is American Banned from Telemarketing in 2013
- Is India Really Cracking Down on Phone Scams?
- Big US Call Analytics Firms Hiya and TNS Blasted for Conflict of Interest over Incorrect Spam Labels
- Sixth Suspect Arrested for Massive Paris IMSI-Catcher SMS Scam
- Telcos, Regulators and Nonprofits Commit to Global Online Meeting on Call Validation
- ‘Urgently’ Transition Away from SMS and Voice 2FA, Warns US Cyber Safety Review Board
- Big Indian Telcos Accuse Amazon of Bypassing International SMS Fees
- Top Lawyer Says Indian Takeover of US Anti-Spam SMS Registry Is Threat to National Security
