Los Angeles Times

Hung up on stopping robocalls

More help is needed to intercept them, including those from EBay and PayPal

- DAVID LAZARUS David Lazarus’ column appears Tuesdays and Fridays. He also can be seen daily on KTLA- TV Channel 5 and followed on Twitter @ Davidlaz. Send your tips or feedback to david. lazarus @ latimes. com.

If you’re being driven crazy by robocalls, help may be on the way.

Sen. Claire McCaskill ( D- Mo.) has introduced legislatio­n to strengthen the Federal Communicat­ion Commission’s ability to crack down on what’s become a hightech pain in the tuchis.

“These calls can be annoying or frustratin­g to many of us, but they can be much more devastatin­g to those, especially seniors, who fall victim to them,” McCaskill said.

Her bill would give the FCC more enforcemen­t authority, allowing it to slap harsher penalties on robocaller­s.

It also would extend the agency’s reach in cracking down on so- called spoofers — robocaller­s that hide their identity from caller ID systems or appear as a call you’d want to take, such as from your local police department or a nearby hospital.

For its part, the FCC is trying to get phone companies more involved. It announced last week that telecom firms “face no legal barriers” in adopting technologi­es aimed at filtering robocalls.

The need for help from on high was underlined by EBay and PayPal, both of which recently announced that they were modifying their terms of service to allow “auto- dialed or prerecorde­d calls or text messages” to contact users.

That’s exactly what it sounds like. EBay and PayPal, which are now in the process of splitting apart, are reserving the right to robocall you. They say they might do this to collect debts, offer promotions or ask survey questions.

EBay’s contract change took effect last week. PayPal’s will kick in July 1.

This is messed up on a number of levels, not least that these guys should know better. Consumers have made it clear, loudly, that they don’t like being bothered in this manner. The FCC says it received more than 215,000 complaints about robocalls last year.

New York Atty. Gen. Eric Schneiderm­an contacted EBay and PayPal seeking more informatio­n about their intentions.

“Consumer choice and privacy preference­s are protected by state and federal laws — including laws that specifical­ly aim to stop companies from using invasive robocalls to promote products to consumers who do not wish to receive them,” said Melissa Grace, a spokeswoma­n for Schneiderm­an.

“The attorney general’s office will seek to stop unlawful breaches of privacy and enforce the rules that protect consumers,” she said.

Unfortunat­ely, robocalls fall into a gray area of the law. At least when spoofing is involved.

Federal law forbids using telecommun­ications equipment “to cause any caller identifica­tion service to knowingly transmit misleading or inaccurate caller identifica­tion informatio­n with the intent to defraud, cause harm or wrongfully obtain anything of value.”

That would seem to rule out all spoofing. The problem for consumers is that courts have ruled that “non- harmful” spoofing is OK. For example, a shelter for domestic- abuse victims might want to mask its phone number, or a psychologi­st might want to withhold her home number from a potentiall­y dangerous patient.

Some telemarket­ers have argued that since their intent is merely to contact someone, not defraud them, their spoofing is similarly non- harmful.

McCaskill said nearly all legitimate telemarket­ers honor the federal do- not- call list. She said many robocalls these days are from overseas scammers who intend to cause harm by cheating you out of money.

Her bill would expand the scope of current spoofing rules to apply to anyone outside the country who targets a U. S. resident. It also would increase the penalty for robocall violations to $ 25,000 from $ 16,000 per call.

“Any solution to this problem has to involve increased penalties and prosecutio­ns for violators, along with having phone companies finally offer robocall blocking services that their customers clearly want,” McCaskill said.

Just because U. S. regulators would have the authority to go after overseas scammers, that obviously doesn’t mean teams of commandos would be raiding the offices of spoofers worldwide.

At best, it potentiall­y would give American officials a piece of the action if a foreign government cracked down on a spoofing operation, which seldom happens in places where the practice is common.

What EBay and PayPal are doing is more troublesom­e. These aren’t overseas scammers. They’re a couple of the best- known companies in Silicon Valley.

Nor are they trying to defraud anyone or cause harm, though interrupti­ng people’s dinners with robocalls might be deemed harmful by some.

Mike Wagner, a PayPal spokesman, said the company strives “to be as clear as possible with our customers” and that anyone who doesn’t want to be bothered “can choose not to receive auto- dialed or prerecorde­d message calls.”

However, there’s nothing in the revised terms of service that says you can opt out of robocalls. To learn this, you’d have to read a PayPal blog post that instructs you to contact customer support.

No one at EBay returned my calls and emails.

It seems clear that robocalls can’t be cut off at the source. The best bet for consumers is to intercept them before they reach people’s homes, just as the most effective way of addressing email spam is for Internet service providers to block unwanted messages before they reach subscriber­s.

Lawmakers and regulators are in agreement: More needs to be done to stop robocalls. They’re doing what they can. It’s now up to phone companies to do their share in protecting customers.

I asked AT& T and Verizon about their plans. Both companies declined to comment.

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