FCC Finally Starts Playing Hardball With Robocall Enablers | #whatsapp | #lovescams | #phonescams

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.

Filed Under: fcc, robocalls