FCC approves plan to cut down on millions of pesky robocalls
The robocalls just keep coming.
But some new rules and initiatives may help the Federal Communications Commission and Federal Trade Commission better combat them.
The FCC has approved a proposal to create a database of phone numbers that are reassigned — about 38 million are each year — so the new owners of the numbers can avoid unwanted calls.
Last year, the FCC gave phone companies the ability to block numbers they know are attempting to send spoofed calls that look as if they are local calls. And the agency also began a process to improve caller ID so calls could have “a verified digital fingerprint” to ensure a caller was legit.
Any help to curtail robocalls would be welcome. Consumers get an estimated 98 million robocalls daily, said FCC commissioner Brendan Carr, speaking at a Friday robocall forum co-hosted by the FCC and FTC.
The FCC gets about 200,000 complaints about robocalls each year, Carr says.
Meanwhile, the FTC got 4.5 million complaints about unwanted calls in 2017 and gets about 400,000 daily, the agency says. Fraud from unwanted calls amounts to about $9.5 billion annually, according to the FTC.
Not everyone files a complaint, “so you can extrapolate significantly upwards from that to get a sense of this problem,” Carr said.
The FCC also proposed more than $200 million in fines for illegal robocallers in 2017, he said. “The unfortunate inventiveness of scammers, technical challenges and sheer volume of calls are daunting for any one entity to defeat,” Pai said. “But working together, we have a better chance.”
In its latest salvo against robocallers, the FTC on Friday filed a complaint against alleged repeat offender Alliance Security and founder Jasjit Gotra, which failed to comply with a 2014 settlement for illegal robocalls in 2014.
Alliance, which in the past operated under several business names including Versatile Marketing Solutions, has made at least 2 million illegal calls including more than 1 million to numbers on the agency’s Do Not Call Registry since 2014, the FTC says.
“They violated the law, and that’s no way to sell security,” FTC commissioner Terrell McSweeny said in addressing the forum. “Even with many cops on the beat, the calls keep coming.”
Telecom providers are working with industry groups currently on the testing of the “digital fingerprints” that will enable phone companies to verify whether calls are legitimate or spoofed. Meanwhile, more than 500 apps are available for smartphones to help block calls.
Regulators might need tougher penalties for illegal robocallers, as well as longer statutes of limitations to give them more time to investigate possible offenders, forum attendees said. In the meantime, consumers should continue to notify the FTC and FCC about robocall complaints at their websites (ftc.gov/ calls and fcc.gov/robocalls), she said.
“The FTC is publishing complaint data daily, which is helping in the fight,” said Svetlana Gans, chief of staff to acting FTC chairman Maureen Ohlhausen. “Companies are sharing information with each other to trace back illegal robocalls.”
The agencies have a Stop Illegal Robocalls Tech Expo scheduled for April 23 in Washington.