If you have a cellphone, you’ve likely become inundated at some point by robocalls. Maybe it’s credit card debt, timeshare homes, warranties or protection plans, or something else, but there are myriad topics robocallers use to try and either scam consumers into giving up valuable data, such as financial information.
Washington D.C. and the Federal Communications Commission are well aware of the problem and began tackling it in earnest with legislation this year. Previous bills have attempted to crack down but robocall companies or scammers have taken advantage of loopholes in the law or the laws have not had enough teeth to make a dent. A bill supported by Georgia Rep. Rick Allen (R-GA 12) and passed by the House on Wednesday 417-3 aims to change that.
Allen spoke on the House floor and urged his colleagues to pass the bill prior to the vote.
“For too long, unwanted callers have circumvented the law in order to deliberately mislead Americans through robocalls and spoofing. In fact, this is the number one issue at every town hall that I hold in my district,” said Allen. “Unfortunately, the number of robocall scams are ever increasing. Robocalls should not be a part of our everyday lives and we must take action to stop it. This malicious practice has led to fraud and theft, exploiting vulnerable consumers – including our nation’s seniors. That’s why I was proud to cosponsor H.R. 3375, the Stopping Bad Robocalls Act, which passed the House in July.”
That bill made its way over to the Senate and eventually became the Pallone-Thune TRACED Act. The bill would require phone-service providers to implement an effective caller-ID authentication program and allow providers to block unauthenticated calls.
“This bill allows the Federal Communications Commission to seek financial penalties against those making calls with misleading caller identification information. Most importantly, this legislation allows robocalls to be blocked transparently at no extra charge to Americans. We must stop this practice once and for all by identifying and taking action against these violators,” said Allen.
The bill is a little less stringent than the original Stopping Bad Robocalls Act, but Market Watch reported that the National Consumer Law Center is concerned the TRACED Act does not go as far but got the most traction because the FCC was already working on many of its proposed solutions.
Debt collection agencies may have been the force behind the compromise. In a statement last week, the Association of Credit and Collection Professionals thanked the bill’s writers for taking their industry and some of its concerns into account.
“Although this is a far from perfect piece of legislation, we appreciate that Congress ultimately considered how the accounts receivable management industry and other legitimate actors would have been impacted by certain broad language in the original House bill that hindered needed business communications and made American businesses prone to additional frivolous litigation.”
The TRACED Act will now head back to the senate, likely to be voted on next week. If passed, it could take some time, but you might be getting a few less phone calls in the future.
