Progress welcome in fight against robocalls
In this era of endless political bickering, of red states vs. blue states and rural vs. urban interests duking it out endlessly in the media, online and elsewhere, sometimes one can’t help but wonder if there’s any issue that can unite Americans of all stripes.
There appears to be an answer: robocalls. It’s hard to imagine that anyone appreciates the annoyance that these regular intrusions cause, not to mention their use in connection with fraudulent activity. That goes for the landline phone customer who is tired of having to jump up and answer the phone only to hear a recorded voice or a fast-talking scam artist, or the cellphone user who has to stop what they’re doing and make a quick determination whether or not it’s a call they want to answer. In some cases that can mean missing an urgent communication.
In that bipartisan spirit, we are happy to note that the attorneys general from every state as well as the District of Columbia have joined with telecommunications industry leaders in an effort to block robocalls before they reach consumers.
The deal announced last week is expected to help protect consumers from receiving illegal robocalls, and assist law enforcement in investigating and prosecuting those who are abusing technology to harass and/or defraud people over the phone.
Phone service providers have promised to launch call-blocking technology at no cost to consumers and to make available other free anti-robocall devices and apps.
The agreement comes as telecommunications companies are under pressure from the Federal Communications Commission to address this major source of complaints from consumers. Across the U.S. there were 48 billion robocalls last year, up from 31 billion in 2017, according to a tally by YouMail Inc., a developer of software that blocks the calls. This year illegal calls rang Americans’ phones an estimated 4.7 billion times in July alone. Those are astonishing and dismaying numbers.
AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile US Inc. said in July that they were making progress toward installing technology to authenticate calls so consumers would know if the call is coming from the person supposedly making it. The FCC has demanded the technology be in place by the end of the year.
That’s the key issue here. The practice of “spoofing” defeats caller ID systems by making it seem as if a call is coming from a different number than its actual source. So something that appears to be a local number could really be from anywhere. That’s what forces phone users to make a never-ending series of judgment calls on which calls they should pick up and which they should ignore.
The attorneys general are talking tough, with New York’s Letitia James saying: “The bad actors running these deceptive operations will soon have one call left to make: to their lawyers.”
But let there be no mistake. As with everything else in today’s fast-moving world of technology, the bad guys are bound to come up with ways to get around whatever measures government and phone companies implement. This is going to require ongoing vigilance on everyone’s part.
We’ve already experienced this. In the 1990s the government mandated the establishment of the Do Not Call list, which enabled consumers to opt out of telemarketing calls. That worked for a while. It certainly doesn’t anymore.
Prosecutors have a tremendous challenge in trying to catch and prosecute the offenders and ultimately deter people from engaging in this practice. Perpetrators are operating all over the world. Hopefully the technological might of the companies involved will make it possible to track down the criminals involved.
There have been some signs of hope. In June state and federal authorities announced 94 enforcement actions against illegal robocallers that allegedly placed an estimated 1 billion robocalls to consumers, a move they said signaled their heightened interest in combating such scams. Some of the calls were scams meant to trick people into giving out personal information.
Even with the recent deal and some prosecutorial progress, we still support efforts on Capitol Hill to enact legislation that bolsters efforts to fight this scourge. As with the nationwide effort by state prosecutors, this is a prime opportunity for bipartisanship. Let’s not let it slip away.
— The Reading Eagle,
MediaNews Group