Nomorobo & The Federal Trade Commission Join Forces to Battle Illegal Robocalls at DEF CON 22 Hacker Conference

LAS VEGAS, NV--(Marketwired - Aug 6, 2014) - Nomorobo, the free, cloud-based service that blocks illegal robocalls and telemarketers, today announced that it is teaming up with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) at this year's DEF CON 22 Hacker Conference being held in Las Vegas, Nevada on August 7-10, 2014 at the Rio Hotel & Casino.

The FTC is hosting its second robocall challenge, 'Zapping Rachel' at the annual hacker conference and offering participants up to $17,000 in prizes for open-source solutions to help build the next-generation of robocall honeypots. A robocall honeypot is a system designed to attract robocalls and gather information about them, which can help researchers and investigators combat these illegal, pre-recorded messages.

Nomorobo founder and CEO Aaron Foss has developed one of the nation's largest functioning honeypots for fighting robocalls. Foss will support the Commission's latest challenge by providing robocall data that will be used to develop and test the contest submissions.

"I'm excited to be involved in this year's Zapping Rachel competition," noted Foss. "The FTC has been a leader in the battle against robocalls and I look forward to helping them zap even more illegal robocallers in the months and years ahead."

Since becoming one of the winners of the 2012 challenge, Nomorobo has blocked more than 6.2 million malicious robocalls from reaching consumers. Worse than a mere annoyance, these illegal robocalls often result in fraud. In fact, $376 million was lost to phone fraud during the past year alone. Between 2011 and 2013, that number reached over a billion dollars. Nomorobo is one of the best technologies available for landline phones that is able to block illegal robocalls while not affecting legitimate calls, such as doctor's appointment notifications and school cancellations.

Zapping Rachel will consist of three stand-alone phases. For the first "Creator" phase, contestants will build honeypots that can recognize inaccurate information in the calls they receive, such as spoofed caller IDs, and identify calls that are likely robocalls. In the second "Attacker" phase, contestants will think like robocallers and attempt to circumvent or trick a honeypot created for the contest. The third "Detective" phase asks contestants to analyze data and develop an algorithm to predict which calls from an existing honeypot are likely robocalls. Judges will score submissions based on functionality and accuracy, as well as innovation and creativity.

About Nomorobo
Nomorobo is a free online service that effectively blocks illegal robocalls from a person's phone. Nomorobo uses a service called "simultaneous ring" that is provided by most VoIP phone companies. This feature allows incoming calls to be routed to a second telephone line. Nomorobo forces this second line to identify and hang up on illegal robocalls before they can ring through to the user. To learn more about this free service, visit www.nomorobo.com.