John Oliver takes on robocalls: 'It should not be up to us to deal with this bullshit'
On Last Week Tonight, John Oliver dug into perhaps the only thing Americans can agree on: the pest of robocalls. It’s not your paranoia – robocalls have increased significantly in the past year, up 57% in 2018 to nearly 50 billion calls.
And people are taking notice; 60% of complaints to the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) concern robocalls. “So they’re definitely aware of the problem,” Oliver said. It’s like the actual tea salon in Vancouver called Neverland. By this point, they definitely know they have a real issue – the only question is, what the fuck are they going to do about it?”
Apparently nothing, which formed the backbone of Oliver’s Sunday night investigation: why robocalls are on the rise, and what can be done about them.
First, Oliver defined robocalls as “any call where you hear a recording or robot voice, or when a machine automatically dialed your number, even if there’s a real person on the other end”. The vast majority of robocalls are sponsored by large companies, such as top offenders Capitol One, Comcast and the bank Wells Fargo, which has used robocalls to harass clients over their debt payments; one woman’s late mortgage payment triggered 6,000 Wells Fargo robocalls over four years, even up to over 20 calls per day, according to ABC News.
If you’re thinking, “Hold on, what about the Do Not Call list?” Oliver continued, you’re right: it still exists. But it only applies to sales calls, not the scammers who 1) don’t care, and 2) can easily assume another’s identity through a method called “spoofing”.
“Despite sounding like urban dictionary slang for when magicians shoot heroin, spoofing is undeniably effective,” Oliver explained. Robocallers can pretend to be calling from your area – increasing the chance that you’ll pick up – or impersonate someone you know.
For example, Oliver showed a clip in which a reporter’s mom providers her social security number to robocaller posing as her son, though that description fails to capture the startling ease of the scam.
The proliferation of robocalls begs the question: what can we do about it? By law, companies can’t robocall you without consent, “but that is where this gets tricky”, Oliver explained. Those densely worded and tiny-fonted user agreements you sign? They often give companies consent to robocall and make revoking that privilege arduous.
For instance, Oliver continued, in order for a customer of Credit One bank to stop its robocalls, one must physically mail a written notice with one’s name, address, and last four digits of the account number to a PO Box in Nevada.
“And it makes total sense why you would opt not to do that. I would rather receive 1,000 phone calls a day, every day for the rest of my life, then go out and buy a stamp,” Oliver said as he launched into a signature rapid-fire rant. “I mean, How the fuck would I
even do that? Do I have to go to a Post Office, or can I just go to a Walgreens? And if I can go to Walgreens, is it all the Walgreenses, or just some? And if it’s just some, how do I find out which ones? Call? Literally call a place of business with my telephone and ask them if they can sell me a stamp? Ok, then what? I have to physically walk to the Walgreens? Literally physically walk, like with my legs? Wait in line and buy a stamp – what now? Put it in a mailbox? Where the fuck am I going to find a mailbox?”
Rants aside, Oliver had a much bigger point about robocalls: “It should not be entirely up to us to deal with this bullshit. The FCC (Federal Communications Commission) has the authority to police robocalls.” But the FCC is now headed by Ajit Pai, who has refused to enforce any penalties on robocallers, despite calling them a “scourge”.
Pai could require telecoms companies to offer free call blocking services or implement call authentication, but instead he has merely “urged” them to do it. Experts are also worried that Pai will tighten the legal definition of robocalls, stripping consumer protection power and likely further increasing robocalls.
Oliver wasn’t standing for it, and unveiled his plan of action: robocall the offices of the five FCC commissioners. According to the host, it only took the show’s tech guy fifteen minutes to rig up a button that would trigger robocalls, featuring Oliver’s voice and bagpipe music, to their offices every 90 minutes.
“So, FCC, you know what you need to do,” Oliver said as he pushed the button that launched an oversize model finger to press a larger, more diabolical button. “And by the way, if you want to tell us that you didn’t consent to be robocalled, that’s absolutely no problem. Just write a certified letter to the address that we’ve buried somewhere within the first chapter of Moby Dick that’s currently scrolling up the screen.
“Find the address, write the letter, and we’ll stop the calls immediately,” he concluded. “And if you’re thinking that there should be a simpler way to opt out, well, no shit.”