FCC Robocall Enforcement A Feckless Mess, Experts Once Again Tell Congress
from the engaging-in-the-same-behavior-but-expecting-a-different-outcome dept
We’ve long noted how absurd it is that scammers, debt collectors, and greedy telemarketers have ruined our voice communications networks. We’ve also noted how a big reason our robocall problem never gets fixed is because the regulator in charge of it (the FCC) routinely fixates on scammers and not the “legit” companies that use the same tactics and routinely undermine reform and enforcement efforts.
The National Consumer Law Center (NCLC) has been making this point for a long while, and this week the NCLC’s Senior Counsel Margot Freeman Saunders testified before Congress about the robocall problem. Her key points, once again, were that the lion’s share of robocallers are everyday companies who’ve worked tirelessly (with notable success) to ensure regulators are as feckless as possible.
But she was also once again quick to point out the FCC isn’t doing its job:
“We believe the number of illegal calls would be significantly reduced if the FCC were to adopt a system of swiftly suspending the ability of complicit providers to transmit illegal calls after they have been notified of previous illegal transmissions.”
Saunders’ 2018 testimony made many of the same points, yet we’ve seen only modest progress. Last year the organization circulated this chart showing you who the biggest offenders actually are when it comes to robocalls:
A lot of robocallers are debt collectors who harass people they know can’t pay outstanding debts, inundating some folks with as many as 500 calls per week. There’s also an endless amount of telecom companies that call you to upsell you to more expensive services. And, of course, there are the robocalls you actually want, and don’t want hamstrung by enforcement efforts.
There’s a bit of a double whammy here. One, the FCC has historically been largely feckless when it comes to consumer protection and standing up to bigger companies. They’ve been complicit in discussing the robocall problem as if scammers are the only problem, because scammers generally don’t have high powered lobbyists and lawyers pulling from nearly unlimited budgets.
The other problem is that while the FCC is supposed to enforce robocall offenses and levy fines, they aren’t allowed to collect fines. That’s left to the DOJ, which routinely just… doesn’t bother. As a result a comically small volume of the overall fines levied are ever actually collected. For example between 2015 and 2019 the FCC issued $208.4 million in robocall fines, but collected just $6,790.
Some of that is because it’s hard to collect fines on criminals who use spoofed numbers and a tangled web of fake addresses. But still, Saunders notes that the FCC doesn’t really do a good job at enforcement even when the culprits are clear:
“Of the more than 7,000 voice service providers with certifications in the Robocall Mitigation Database (RMD), the FCC has brought a total of 27 enforcement actions for deficient certifications; many of these actions addressed providers’ failure to upload relevant documents rather than actual sub-standard practices. The fines issued against some of the most egregious fraudsters have not been recovered, which undermines the intended deterrent effect of imposing these fines. Yet the Commission has referred only three forfeiture orders to the Department of Justice related to unwanted calls since the FCC began TRACED Act reporting in 2020.”
Again, the primary reason the FCC is so feckless, understaffed, and undermanned is because “legitimate industry” — not scammers operating out of dodgy strip malls — has spent the better part of a generation lobbying to make them that way. Real reformers genuinely can’t even survive the FCC nomination process (see: the Gigi Sohn saga), ensuring the agency is routinely staffed with status quo careerists.
That the agency can’t or won’t do its job if it requires standing up to big companies (like the wireless giants that spent a decade dragging their feet on basic anti robocall number spoofing measures, or the broadband monopolies that routinely rip you off) should surprise absolutely nobody at this point.
Filed Under: consumer protection, doj, fcc, phone calls, robocalls, spoofing, voice network
Companies: nclc
Comments on “FCC Robocall Enforcement A Feckless Mess, Experts Once Again Tell Congress”
Top 50?
What does that Top 50 Robocallers of 2021 really represent as it isn’t what it says it is with multiple instances of the same name. 4x “Unknown Robocaller”, 4x “Citibank”, 4x “Capital One”, 3x “Spectrum”, and several more. Is it even from the listed name or is it a scammer just using a common bank/service?
Re:
I assume that they are listed by source number, and so anyone with multiple robo-calling centers appears multiple times in the list.
Re: Re:
Meanwhile the vast majority of Robocalls I get are from suspiciously similar companies like “Medicaid Department”, Or Accident Claims Department” , who never use the same number twice, and who’s numbers are invalid to boot…
And that’s to say nothing of the large percentage with nobody on the other end.
Re: Re: Re:
The phone companies always know the number placing the call, as that is required for billing. Caller ID on the other hand cam lie, presumably because it is useful for companies to keep out going and incoming calls on separate lines, and so can give you a number that will be answered, eventual, rather than one where you calls will be dropped and ignored.
Re: Re: Re:2
The numbers the robocalls I get, don’t go through at all, not unanswered, not dropped after a short period in automated answering hell, disconnected, the numbers are not in service.
That’s only useful a company that doesn’t actually want to be contacted.
Beyond Reach
Most of them that I receive are from overseas. Not only are the CIDs spoofed, but the primary operation is outside of U.S. jurisdiction. The DOJ would likely not achieve anything by perusing the operations themselves which place the calls. Investigating the CID of the originator won’t lead to a fine.
The only point that is accountable is the VOIP gateway. The FCC can likely crackdown on a significant robocall volume by targeting the gateway for VOIP spoofing, without upsetting their precious “legit” companies, particularly because the legit ones desire a call back.
If the FCC and lawmakers really want to put a dent in robocalls, then they need to get VOIP companies to put down an escrow despoit.
Re:
A deposit against what, exactly? And how much, exactly or approximately?
Better, far better, would be to simply force (by law) the phone service providers to charge each and every caller a pittance, something on the order of one penny per call originated at source. You can bet your bottom dollar that Mom will still call her daughter for a daily chat, but companies that place more than a million calls a day, they’re gonna take a long hard look at just how much their bottom line is going to suffer.
For each call originating overseas, the incoming service provider should be able to “recoup” 2 cents per call handled. And the overseas company knows that if they don’t pay up, they’ll be cut off, again by law.
And for those companies who insist that this is just a ‘cost of doing business, so we’ll just pay as we go’, the fees will increase over time. Again by law.
What’s not to like?
Re: Re:
The deposit would be used to cover TCPA and DNCR violations, for starters. Exactly how much is something for which I don’t know the specifics. I don’t have research on how many robocalls are placed on average per VOIP gateway before it gets shut down. I imagine that would be a good question for the FCC or security researchers. But without that information, I would speculate $30k. If the gateway gets shut down within 2 weeks, then that would cost around $780k per year, and that kind of financial loss would likely render most small-to-midsize operations unprofitable.
A fine idea. I’m certain that the carrier would then demand a deposit from a VOIP gateway before it is provided service.
Re:
Well, some are overseas, sure, but plenty are not. Spoofing (or mangling) CID doesn’t fool the telcos. We have the relevant info. So we can clearly address bad actors in the States (and don’t tell me the Feds can’t find where Citibank lives, it isn’t David Miscavige), and if we put a fiftieth of the effort into addressing foreign scammers that we put into, say, Kim Dotcom, (never minding the telcos can bloody well block them anyway) we’d be pretty good.
Just who did this Margot Freeman talk to again? If it was ‘Congress’ as we’re used to calling the House, then that was a waste of time. But going off-site and searching her name, I see that she spoke to a Senate sub-committee. That might be productive, one can hope.
As much to the point, ArsTechnica tells us that a US Chamber of Commerce sent someone to counter this, stating pretty baldly that there are already plenty of laws on the books, that nothing further needs to be done regarding robocalls. That’s troubling, coming from a body that purports to protect business interests, when they know that the communications system is breaking down faster than it can be fixed – and American companies are suffering from this breakdown as much or more than the consumer/phone subscriber.
Even I now refuse all calls where I don’t recognize the incoming phone number, and woe is me, I’ve missed out on opportunities to come in to the doctor’s office sooner than my scheduled appointment (thanks to someone else cancelling their appointment). That number is now on my whitelist, but you get my drift, right?
Solve the problem
Step 1: require every device on the network to have an imei type number that is coded into the hardware.
Step 2: enable phones to have “receive calls/texts only from numbers saved in my contacts, and don’t allow any calls from numbers not in my list to use my voicemail” functionality
Step 3: all phones should have the ability to have no ringtone for numbers not in the contact list, for those who don’t want to disable unknown callers.
Then make 1 and 3 the default setup for the network/phone respectively.
How to fix the problem
I know this is a drastic fix, but:
Set every phone to only allow calls from contacts’ phone numbers or registered numbers, such as doctors, schools, businesses, and so on.
That way, the number of unsolicited calls will be significantly reduced: no robo calls, no sales call, no debt collection, and so on.
Sure, numbers might get spoofed, but if you get a car warranty scam call that says it’s from Amazon, then you can tell Amazon to deal with the scammers spoofing their number.
Unfortunately, this idea will also block legitimate unknown numbers, but maybe that’s a risk we should take.
Re:
How about fixing your regulatory system as effective regulators can mitigate the problem. This side of the pond, the combined total of robo and advertising calls I received on both landline and mobile in the past year was exactly zero. The don’t call register system works, if backed by an effective regulator.
Robocalls are the number one enemy ever
Discussing robocalls is just ignoring the elephant in the room since April 12th, 1994.
That would be the birth date of spam.
I’ve got robocalls handled — simple Turing test. When our “leaders” suck up to the direct marketing folks spam will remain the number one enemy. Let’s ignore it and talk more about robocallers. Do you even have a landline?
in-addr? SPF? DMARC? domainkey? Nagh. Spammers just sign up to use the Big Guys (google, microsoft, yahoo) and everyone lets their swill in. The more tools, the merrier.
When the elephants fight it is the grass that suffers. That elephant is spam.