FCC Finally Starts Playing Hardball With Robocall Enablers
from the robocalls-bad dept
The FCC is finally starting to toughen up when it comes to tackling our nationwide robocall scourge.
The agency announced this week that it will soon kick seven voice-over IP providers out of its database of trusted carriers if they continue to fail to implement safeguards against robocalls:
“This is a new era. If a provider doesn’t meet its obligations under the law, it now faces expulsion from America’s phone networks. Fines alone aren’t enough. Providers that don’t follow our rules and make it easy to scam consumers will now face swift consequences.”
An estimated 4.2 billion robocalls are placed every single month, effectively making one of our top communications platforms at worst unusable and at best annoying.
There are several reasons why. A lot of the government’s responses to the robocall menace have involved feckless fines that the FTC and FCC rarely even collect. And we often go well out of our way to craft loophole filled rules designed by debt collectors and the marketing industry, which often utilize many of the same tactics to harass consumers who can’t pay or don’t want to be called.
Things are slowly changing, though our focus remains almost exclusively on outright scam robocalls. The 2019 Telephone Robocall Abuse Criminal Enforcement and Deterrence (TRACED) Act created a Robocall Mitigation Database of certified voice providers that have pledged to implement STIR/SHAKEN anti-robocall protocols (which help thwart number spoofing).
A lot of spam calls originate overseas, then bounce around so-called gateway providers and other dodgy voice over IP (VOIP) providers before they hit your phone. Then, of course, there’re just companies, that, for whatever reason, refuse to get on board with SHAKEN/STIR and have allowed robocalls to proliferate.
According to the FCC, Akabis, Cloud4, Global UC, Horizon Technology Group, Morse Communications, Sharon Telephone Company and SW Arkansas Telecommunications and Technology all have two weeks to shape up or they’ll be blocked nationwide.
Comments on “FCC Finally Starts Playing Hardball With Robocall Enablers”
NOW
If they could do this with the internet.
Beware of whatsapp. Its designed to keep both parties anon. A person can be anyplace in the world, asking you for money.
Re:
Whatsapp… keeps the sender anonymous from you, but sends Meta all your… Meta data. Just refuse to use it and use Signal instead (same back end without the Meta value-adds).
“for whatever reason”
Money, Karl, the answer is money.
I have VoIP numbers scattered throughout the US. Any call I get on any of them I consider to be a scam, as the numbers are unlisted, I’ve held them for well over a decade, and I’m not a US citizen and have no financial interests in the US.
The calls I get include:
Tax consolidation scams (I get this one the most, recently)
Timeshare scams
Parcel delivery scams
Debt collection notices
Suspicious banking activities scams (these are SMS)
Collect calls from prison (not sure if these are scams or a wrong number)
Wrong numbers (usually “pick me up at the bar” and “why didn’t you come pick me up?” types)
Once again, these are all to unlisted US area code numbers I’ve held for over a decade. The only reason I have these numbers is to track scam calls; they never actually send or receive legitimate calls.
… I wonder how telephone monopoly will play out in Arkansas…
Yea but.....
Would I love to see these five companies go away. Sure. But something tells me the ones gatewaying the most calls simply turned in a bogus but reasonable sounding plan to FCC months ago. “We can not turn on SHKEN/STIR right now because /reasons/. However we have a plan in place to fix that by /some date/”
Date will come and go and FCC will again send out letters asking why they are not playing ball, and they will say, “Oh so sorry, We ran into other reasons, but we are working on them and have a new date.”
Lather, rinse, repeat.
What you are seeing with these five companies is ones that are so dumb, they don’t know how to play the sliding schedule forever game.
I’m shocked the FCC is trying to play hardball. Of course, it’s only taken them 40 years to get around to ending this shit.
Toothless is useless.
The TRACED Act contains no useful provisions requiring companies do anything other than ASSERT IN A FILING that they’re compliant.
I’ve filed my comment prior to yesterday’s deadline. We’ll see if they either publish it, respond to it, or act on it. I’m not holding my breath.
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