Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr is turning up the heat in his efforts to stop robocalls.
Tuesday, in a comment letter, Carr urged the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to encourage telecom companies to implement call blocking and call authentication solutions that would protect consumers from illegal robocalls and spoofing. The comment letter follows the unveiling last week of the Anti-Robocall Principles to fight illegal robocalls. The Principles were developed through the efforts of a bipartisan public-private coalition of 51 attorneys general and 12 phone companies.
“We are continuing the fight against illegal robocalls and spoofing on many fronts,” said Carr. “I am joining with my fellow Attorneys General to encourage the FCC to take common sense steps to combat the prevalence of robocalls and spoofing.”
In their comments to the FCC, the coalition of Attorneys General state that telecom providers should:
● Offer free, automatic call-blocking services to all customers. The call-block services should be based on reasonable analytics and should not block important calls, including emergency alerts or automated calls that customers have signed up for, like medical reminders.
● Monitor network traffic to identify patterns consistent with robocalls and take action to cut off the calls or notify law enforcement.
● Implement the STIR/SHAKEN caller ID call authentication technology, which will help ensure that telephone calls are originating from secure, verified numbers, not spoofed sources. The coalition supports the FCC’s proposal to take regulatory action against telecom companies that do not comply with STIR/SHAKEN.
● Develop caller ID authentication to prevent robocalls to landline telephones. This is particularly urgent because the people scammed by robocall scammers are often elderly consumers or live in rural areas and primarily use landline technology.
Many of these actions are also covered in the Anti-Robocall Principles which focuses on addressing illegal robocalls through prevention and enforcement. Twelve phone companies, including Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint, have already signed on to the principles.
Under the Principles, phone companies will work to prevent illegal robocalls by:
● Implementing call-blocking technology at the network level at no cost to customers.
● Making available to customers additional, free, easy-to-use call blocking and labeling tools.
● Implementing technology to authenticate that callers are coming from a valid source.
● Monitoring their networks for robocall traffic.
Phone companies will assist attorneys’ general anti-robocall enforcement by:
● Knowing who their customers are so bad actors can be identified and investigated.
● Investigating and taking action against suspicious callers – including notifying law enforcement and state attorneys general.
● Working with law enforcement, including state attorneys general, to trace the origins of illegal robocalls.
According to Carr, this agreement will help protect phone users from illegal robocalls and make it easier for attorneys general to investigate and prosecute bad actors.
“Not only are illegal robocalls an incredible annoyance to the people of Georgia, they can cause significant financial harm to our citizens,” said Carr. “We are pleased to join in this fight with our partners in the public and private sectors and will continue to work together to prevent scams from happening and go after the bad actors if they do.
“It is evident that the explosive growth of caller ID spoofing and robocalls is being driven in large part by scams,” Carr continued. “State attorneys general are on the front lines fighting the criminals behind these scams, and in Georgia, we will continue to work with our federal partners to stop those who try to take advantage of our citizens.”
It is estimated that 47.8 billion robocalls were made in the U.S. in 2018. This represents a 56.8 percent increase over 2017. And of these 47.8 billion total estimated robocalls, 37 percent were scams related to health insurance, student loans, easy money scams, tax scams, travel scams, business scams and warranty scams. The FCC similarly reports that imposter scams – including bad actors falsely representing that they are with the government, romance scams, and technical support scams – were the most common consumer complaint in 2018, resulting in $488 million in consumer losses, a 48.7 percent increase over 2017.
