FCC's 'New' Robocall Plan Isn't Particularly New, Won't Seriously Reduce Robocalls
from the half-measures-and-good-intent dept
So for a long time the FCC has made “fighting robocalls” one of their top priorities. Though with Americans still receiving 132 million Robocalls every single day, you may have noticed that these efforts don’t usually have the impact they claim. Headlines about “historic” or “record” FCC robocall fines usually overshadow the agency’s pathetic failure to collect on those fines, or the fact that thanks to recent Supreme Court rulings, the agency is boxed in as to which kind of annoying calls and spam texts it can actually police.
Which brings us to last week, when the agency announced yet another major action, this time proposed rule updates that would make it harder on the “gateway” companies (which connected overseas callers to U.S. phone networks) and the smaller phone operators that are the origins of so much of the problem. While the FCC’s plan made a lot of headlines, experts were quick to note that most of the improvements were still far from being implemented:
“The plan as-is consists of good ideas, but I don’t think it’s going to make a big difference in the next couple of years,? Brad Reaves, an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at NC State University told Motherboard.
The proposal is just a proposal for now, and ?gateway providers? still aren?t covered by existing rules. Neither are smaller providers with less than 100,000 customers, who?ve been exempted from the rules until 2023. ?These two types are the providers that most in the industry believe are serving the robocallers,? he said.”
In short, the FCC’s big plan for robocalls was really just a plan to consider doing something about robocalls, eventually. To be fair, the FCC is doing something relatively good: it’s forcing wireless carriers of all sizes to implement SHAKEN/STIR call authentication tech, which helps combat robocall spoofing. It’s also requiring companies that haven’t implemented this caller verification tech to track their progress in an FCC Robocall Mitigation Database.
But there are two other reasons that the FCC’s well-hyped “solution” to robocalls isn’t much of one. For one, the agency is boxed in thanks to a recent Supreme Court Facebook ruling (Facebook, Inc. v. Duguid) that left it hamstrung when it comes to policing spam texts or live-person marketing and scam calls made with an autodialier:
“The rules were, until April 1st of this year, that our cellphones were protected not only from pre-recorded calls, but unwanted texts, and unwanted live calls made by an autodialer,? Saunders said, referring to the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA). But in April a Supreme Court ruling (Facebook, Inc. v. Duguid) effectively nullified the TCPA?s ban on autodialed calls and texts to cell phones without your consent. So while there are growing but sometimes inconsistent restrictions on pre-recorded robocalls, annoying spam texts and many live calls made with auto dialers remain perfectly legal.”
The other major problem is that the existing U.S. rules about robocallers are heavily influenced by the lobbying of numerous industries and telemarketing interests. That has historically resulted in rules and enforcement that fixate exclusively on “scam” callers, while providing big loopholes for “legitimate” telemarketers, spammers, and debt collecting robocalls who can be every bit as unwanted, and who often use the same exact tactics:
“Saunders? Congressional testimony has highlighted how scammers often comprise the minority of overall robocalls. Many are debt collectors working for banks or telecom providers, who relentlessly harass consumers they know can?t pay their bills. Efforts to rein in those types of calls have often taken a backseat thanks to lobbying pressure.”
So yes, some of what the FCC is doing is helping. Authentication tech helped trigger an 8% reduction in overall robocalls in August, though with this kind of cat and mouse game it’s not clear if that reduction will last. But the bigger problem remains that the FCC’s authority has been boxed in by the Supreme Court, and lobbying has resulted in existing rules often being a little too friendly to equally obnoxious, “legitimate” telemarketers. The reality is that Americans receive 5.5 million robocalls every hour. That’s an absolute tidal wave that’s not slowing down without significant changes on multiple fronts.
Filed Under: fcc, robocalls, spam, telemarketing
Comments on “FCC's 'New' Robocall Plan Isn't Particularly New, Won't Seriously Reduce Robocalls”
As long as corporations are getting paid, they will not care.
Overseas and Untouchable
I’ve been receiving spam calls for years, well before this court decision. Facebook v Duguid only deals with autodialers. While the call centers on the other side of the globe are indeed using what would be considered an illegal autodialer to place calls, they are beyond the jurisdiction of U.S. authorities. The FCC needs to target the gateway providers that are funneling Illegitimate calls into the country, rather than nitpick the mostly legitimate customer service centers that are still based on this continent. The autodialer TCPA rules can’t be used against a gateway because the gateway doesn’t own or control an autodialer. Instead, the gateway providers should be shut down for illegal spoofing.
Easy-peasy
I’ve said this before:
FCC should mandate a new vertical service code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical_service_code or “star code” which tags the last-recieved call to that number as SPAM. That tag would initiate a chargeback of, say, 0.01 or possibly 0.1 cents to the calling party. The chargeback is designed as a “hot potato” such that each and every carrier involved in relaying the spam call – in inverse order – will be liable if and only if they cannot identify the source of the call on their network as either a subscriber or a different carrier delivering the traffic to them. Since the FCC’s authority ends at the US border, this means that the first US carrier to accept foreign spam would be left holding the bag – a logical consequence which will result in increased costs for those importing spam until they rein it in, and eventually in the rewriting of international contracts.
It looks like *99 isn’t currently in use.
Re: Easy-peasy
It was one of the suggestions from a study group a few years ago, but the big providers said, no that would be too hard, they didn’t want to do that. Instead they wanted STIR/SHAKEN, a convoluted mess of a solution looking for problem to solve.
Re: Re: Easy-peasy
STIR/SHAKEN – that explains why I get lots of calls from 007 52637 2663
Do we need to say anything?
Considering the major Corps have taken over the backbone of the Whole system.
Cellphone, Wired phone, Internet, Cable TV, on and on.
THE FED can demand any requirement to KEEP the system up. The problem tends to be getting them to DO IT.
For all the idiocy of letting corps Run wild and Do anything they want. The banking system was a Warning, and could of been handled better. The leash has been let loose and now we have No control over the NEW system created. This is not a capitalist system anymore. And our gov. seems to be backing the new system.
Usually, that’s because they outsourced the writing of it to their primary campaign contributors, which in telecom is usually AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, and Charter.