Demand FCC action to stop robo-calls
Remember the advent of the “Do Not Call List”? The year was 2003, and consumers tired of picking up the phone to an unwanted sales pitch were happy to be getting some relief.
By registering a home number with the federal list administered by the Federal Trade Commission or with the Pennsylvania list managed by the state attorney general’s office, households were assured some protection from businesses or agencies making targeted sales calls.
Unwanted calls from unknown callers became illegal, and businesses stopped making them rather than face fines.
Sixteen years later, it’s a different story.
Technology has given rise to call automation, creating armies of robo-callers that can’t be identified and don’t care about the illegality. Robo-calls are generated by the millions from overseas servers instead of humans, flooding phone land lines.
And the numbers keep rising. In 2018, Americans received 48 billion robocalls, a 57 percent increase over the previous year.
Nearly half those calls are scams, meant to steal money or identity information from consumers. According to the Federal Communications Commission, consumers lose more than $350 annually in telephone scams.
What can be done?
At a Chester County forum last month, consumers expressed frustration to legislators.
State Sen. Andy Dinniman, Senate Democratic Policy Committee Chairwoman Sen. Lisa Boscola and Sen. Tim Kearney heard from local residents, business owners, officials from the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office, and representatives of the telecommunications industry.
Among those speaking was West Chester business owner Karen Cavin, who said her business is interrupted nearly 50 times a day by robocalls.
“How are we to know these are not customers asking questions? We have to answer them. How do I know these are not my vendors? I’ve got to take them. … It’s distracting, disruptive and it costs you money.”
One of the problems with enforcement according to Sarah Frasch, director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection in the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office, is that “even if the agents are able to identify a criminal, they are often located overseas,” and impossible to fine or prosecute.
Making rules or punishments more stringent has no impact when the offenders are not the least bit worried about being caught.
Stopping the onslaught created by scammers’ use of technology demands a shakeup, according to officials. The latest idea is something called SHAKEN/STIR (Secure Handling of Asserted information using toKENs / Secure Telephone Identity Revisited), to stop call-spoofing, in which telemarketers use equipment to mimic local numbers or the recipient’s own number.
At the heart of the issue, Dinniman noted at the hearing, is privacy and the failure of government and communications agencies to protect it. We may reach the point, he said, where people no long use land lines.
For the vast majority of people who ignore robo-calls, it’s hard to imagine that money is to be gained from ringing millions of phones that don’t get answered.
And yet the plague keeps growing. The answer lies in the caller-ID feature in most phone plans. Due to a system of database search and reward, when a call is made a database search of the number can yield an exchange of a few cents between phone carriers. If 10 calls produce 2 cents each, there is little gain. Make it two million calls, and those pennies add up.
The issue, many say, is that the FCC has not done enough to curb robo-calls through call blocking or other aggressive measures to stop them from originating. These scammers are breaking the law, and a means of enforcement is necessary.
The FCC must devise ways of making robo-calling difficult and unprofitable. Since technology created this problem, a focused effort by the telecommunications industry and FCC on technology to combat it is needed.
Tell your congressional representatives to get involved and pressure the FCC.
Robo-calls invade our privacy, disrupt our homes, distract from work and family.
It’s time to end these calls.