FTC Promises To Play Hardball With Robocall-Enabling VOIP Providers
from the whac-a-mole dept
Every year or so, the FCC unveils a new plan to combat robocalls it claims will finally tackle the annoying menace. Granted, year after year, the problem either gets worse or stays relatively the same. We’ve already noted that this is generally due to few things: one, a steady erosion by the courts (and lobbyists) of what the FCC can or can’t actually do when it comes to various annoyances like automated spam texts or live robocalls.
The other issue is that regulators and policymakers tend to frame the problem as one exclusive to scammers — when a wide variety of telecoms, marketing, and debt collection companies use all the same dodgy tactics to annoy consumers they often know can’t pay anyway. If you hadn’t noticed, trying to craft rules that leave huge carve outs for “legitimate” companies while still hamstringing outright scammers generally doesn’t work very well. You’ve also got to craft rules and systems that allow robocalls people want (medical and dental appointment reminders, for example).
Even when only talking about scam robocalls, there’s still room for meaningful improvement. The steady adoption of SHAKEN/STIR authentication technology has helped crack down on phone number spoofing. Targeting “gateway providers,” who act as a proxy here in the U.S. for robocalls originating overseas, could also help.
Meanwhile the FTC says it’s also going to start filing lawsuits against voice over IP (VOIP) companies that fail to cooperate with investigations into illegal robocalls:
“Companies that receive FTC Civil Investigative Demands must promptly produce all required information,? said Samuel Levine, Director of the FTC?s Bureau of Consumer Protection. ?These demands are not voluntary. Companies that don?t respond fully, or don?t respond at all, will have to answer to a federal district court judge, as these cases demonstrate.”
The agency receives upwards of two million consumer complaints about robocalls every nine months. The YouMail Robocall Index indicates that there are still 3.9 billion robocalls placed to U.S. consumers alone every single day, or 5.3 million robocalls per hour. And again, contrary to the narrative generally seeded by regulators, most U.S. robocallers aren’t “scammers”: they’re cable companies, banks, and debt collectors.
And while a lot of the calls are companies calling about overdue bills, many of these calls cross a line into outright harassment. Many of these companies know the customers they’re reaching out to can’t pay; yet the National Consumer Law Center (NCLC) has repeatedly testified before Congress that these robocallers can sometimes call folks upwards of hundreds of times a day, even after being asked to stop. And they often use many of the same tactics used by outright scammers.
As with everything at the FTC, it’s a matter of resources. The agency is tasked with tackling everything from bleach labeling to home heating system repair scams, generally with limited staff and funds. And while the FCC and FTC dole out a ton of fines against robocallers, the vast majority of them are simply never paid or collected. Either because the target company is a scammer that’s hard to find, or they’re a deep-pocketed corporation that can litigate any penalties for ignoring robocall rules into oblivion.
Again though, you’ll notice focus remains on “illegal” robocalls, which is a problem when the courts and lobbyists keep weakening the definition of what constitutes a “legal” robocall and what regulators can do about it. The broader the definition and the more loopholes allowed to make sure large, “legitimate” companies can continue to annoy and harrass people, the easier they are for outright scam robocallers to exploit.
Comments on “FTC Promises To Play Hardball With Robocall-Enabling VOIP Providers”
Phone companies make a lot of money from these calls through interconnect fees. If we had some CongressCritters who haven’t been bought by the telcos, this would be an easy problem to fix: for every robocall received by a customer, the telco is fined 10 cents.
Re: Re:
The problem with your idea is that not even 10% of the population actually complains about/reports a robo-call. That means that the telco’s profit is only slightly reduced… 10 cents per reported robo-call becomes a mere "business expense", if you will.
And if Congress were to pass a law requiring the telco to fork over all company records vis-a-vis calls originated or received within their domain(s), they’d start hollering "unwarranted invasion of privacy", and tie the government up in the courts for at least 2 years, but probably more like 8 – 10 years.
The true way to change this is to simply require the telcos to charge the originator a hefty fee per number dialed. The telcos won’t mind making the money, not at all. But as the fee per call increases on a sliding scale, the caller will eventually "do the math", and start scaling back. Only the low-volume callers (such as explicit debt collections) and the like will be able to handle this expense.
Oh, and no carve-outs. Period. Not even non-profit charities. Especially not even political calls, as they are often the worst offenders. When one is on a minutes-per-month plan, or a calls-per-month plan, these bastids eat up all kinds of time/calls, and that needs to be addressed in any such law. A simple record of your incoming calls should be sufficient proof to demand recompense in the form of 2X the monthly cost of your plan. (And payable per infraction.)
Then we need to do the same for unwanted texts as well, not everyone has an unlimited plan.
Re: Re: Re:
And if Congress were to pass a law requiring the telco to fork over all company records vis-a-vis calls originated or received within their domain(s), they’d start hollering "unwarranted invasion of privacy", and tie the government up in the courts for at least 2 years, but probably more like 8 – 10 years.
And they’d be right. Snowden is still on the run for revealing a more limited version of your proposal.
Finally
I contend that they’re hard to find because they’re overseas. The overseas call centers are precisely the ones who are doing the spoofing, because they know that they are untouchable. If the FTC cracks down on the VOIP gateway providers, then we’ll finally see a drop in the call volume of Illegitimate calls. It’s about time.
Re: Finally
No need to contend, that is well established and has been covered in these pages multiple times.
Re: Finally
Bravely bold Sir Koby
Rode forth from the internet.
He was not afraid to die,
Oh brave Sir Koby.
He was not at all afraid
To be killed in nasty ways.
Brave, brave, brave, brave Sir Koby.
He was not in the least bit scared
To be mashed into a pulp.
a solution, please
so the FTC is consistently failing on Robocalls because its staff is not correctly "framing" the problem, and FTC is also being denied sufficient funding to accomplish its very broad mission (?)
Why can’t the professional FTC regulators correctly analyze the problem ??
Sounds like some fundamental FTC organizational and top management failure.
Inadequate Funding is ther age-old government bureaucratic excuse for any and all failures.
That cliche rings hollow here.
Re: a solution, please
The FTC can only work on the authority it has. Legislators have limited the authority to deal with robocalls only to the ‘illegitimate’ ones, and have been loosening the definition of ‘legitimate’ robocalls in a ‘slowly turning up the pot to a boil’ fashion. You’ve straw-manned so hard looking to divert from the issue of funding, you’ve erected in in the middle of a forest instead of the field.
Re: Re: a solution, please
…so Congress is the real problem here ?
why then can’t Congress solve this Robocall issue ?
are we citizens foolish to expect our government to remedy our Robocall problems ?
Re: Re: Re: a solution, please
As Koby pointed out, I really meant to say lobbyists, drawing from the quote indicating that lobbyists and the courts they lobby are the issue.
I think right now you would be foolish to expect much from federal legislators. We have one party that wants to dismantle the government and replace it with private business, and one that wants to operate the government only with the cooperation of the party that wants to dismantle the government. Its not a recipe for legislation that implements controls on private business.
Re: Re: a solution, please
My understanding is that the federal legislators, the ones best in position to handle this issue, haven’t really been loosening the definition. In fact, they have hardly touched the issue for over the past 20 years. The FTC has tried coming up with definitions to frame the issue, particularly with regards to the Consumer Telephone Protection Act, but they have failed to get their definitions to pass court muster.
Legislators have consistently lagged behind the technology curve, to where modern communication systems are poorly described in the law, leaving the executive and judicial branches to agonize over the issues. If you’re disappointed, as I have been, that the FTC hasn’t been able to lock onto the proper targets , I say look to congress to keep up with the times.
Re: Re: Re: a solution, please
Congress is the solution, i agree, if it could work, and I absolutely misstated when I said legislators aren’t the problem, I had intended to say lobbyists, and even then I was shortening the quote that indicated lobbyists and the courts they lobby as an issue.
Re: Re: Re: a solution, please
very confusing overall
FTC is formally an "Independent" Federal regulatory agency… fully able to form its own regulatory ‘Definitions’ without any Congressional or Presidential dependence.
So either the FTC leadership doesn’t understand its fundamental authorities or all this longstanding ‘Independent Regulatory Agency’ structure is political nonsense.
Don’t expect the Feds to eliminate Robocalls, ever.
Re: Re: Re:2 a solution, please
FTC is formally an "Independent" Federal regulatory agency…
Apart from the commissioners appointed by the president for a seven year term. This almost guarantees that the FTC will not be hard on big business, as that is where the commissioners will be looking for their next job. The political patronage inherent in their appointment also guarantees that party politics will keep the commissioners disunited.
Solving many of the regulatory problems in the US requires that the political patronage and short termism at the top of the regulatory agencies is removed, and as this means reducing the presidents powers, it is unlikely to happen until the two party grip on power is weakened.
Re: Re: Re:3 a solution, please
Yup, FTC independene from political influences is outrageous myth.
Same with the dozens of other alleged independent federal Regulators.
But the American leftish crowd is so wedded to their fantasy theory of selfless, objective government experts regulating everything in society… that they refuse to see the constant inherent failures of their sacred regulatory bureaucratic ruling structure.
"… most U.S. robocallers aren’t "scammers": they’re cable companies …"
So, scammers.
Simple solutions…
Make getting robocalls opt in.
Do not offer anyone special treatment, if they are so beloved or needed it not hard to send a postcard saying return this postcard to be added to our call list.
They owe a bill, sure. 1 call a day, week, fortnight whatever.
Double the penalties for continuing to call after being told not to.
Maybe force the telcos (at least for POTS lines) to cough up a star code that once you get a scam call you can hang up, dial *## and it flags that call as spam.
Then there is a record & its not a convoluted process.
Gee this gateway has gotten 300 complaints in the last 5 minutes, maybe we should stop their traffic or pay really large fines.
That and just on principle they should fine Dish a couple million for doing the same scammy things they’ve been doing for years trying to sell their product to people on the do not call list pretending that a remote connection to att at some point means they can call you.
Re: Re:
And Spectrum.
And AT&T
Make it $5000 damages per spoofed-number call, together with court costs and triple-time payment to the telecom provider their costs for helping to track down the offender.
I live in an area that was the 9th highest in the nation for robocalls. Especially come supper time, they’d be coming in with a vengeance. Blocking a number never worked because every call had a spoofed number trying to make it look like it was local. You could have a 100 blocked numbers and they’d still keep coming.
Apparently shaken and stirred has been implemented here. The calls have dropped to near zero. However, with the ceasing of the robocalls, they are now starting to get wise and there’s been an uptick of robotexts. Coming from Google gmail, to your phone.
After researching it, evidently I’m in for a long phone call, possibly several times, to get a hold of the advanced techs at the phone company to turn off email to text ability on my account in order to stop them.
Praise google
Googles block spam caller features actually work as the solution to this.
Re: Praise google
It’s not callers I’m getting but rather spam texts coming to the phone. The sender is always different, just like robocalls.
Nowhere does Google actually allow you to stop all texts being sent to your phone. There are multiple complaints about this, which Google solved, not by addressing the issue but by closing the thread complaining about it.
Re: Re: Praise google
Isn’t that Googles response to any complaint from a product (I mean user.)
I would imagine this is one Google should pay attention to. There are some irate parents over the idea that their schoolchildren are getting gmail texts for porn on their phones.