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FCC Closes Robocall Loophole
- sthatipamala 4y agoHere's the full text of the release. I don't know why they just don't just put it on the page itself... : Media Contact: Will Wiquist will.wiquist@fcc.gov For Immediate Release FCC CLOSES ROBOCALL LOOPHOLE FCC Robocall Response Team Has Taken Enforcement Actions, Built Nationwide Partnerships, and Proposed Innovative New Policies to Combat Scam Robocalls -- WASHINGTON, June 30, 2022—Starting today certain small phone companies must comply with FCC rules to implement caller ID authentication tools on their networks, just as large voice service providers are required to since June 30, 2021. Today’s announcement is the latest in a series of actions by the FCC’s Robocall Response Team to cut off the flood of unwanted robocalls hitting consumers and business phone networks. These small phone companies are suspected of facilitating large numbers of illegal robocalls and, as a result, the FCC rolled back an extended caller ID authentication implementation timeline granted to them in its original 2020 rules. “Each time I get a robocall it reminds me that we can’t stop looking for ways to stop these nuisance calls and the scams behind them,” said FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel. “Our team is working to aggressively and creatively find ways to fight back. We will use every authority we have, and we will go to Congress for more. We will not let up.” How We Got Here: In 2020, the FCC granted voice service providers with 100,000 or fewer subscriber lines an extension of STIR/SHAKEN* implementation requirements, consistent with the TRACED Act. However, since then evidence emerged that a subset of these small voice service providers were originating an increasing quantity of illegal robocalls. As a result, in 2021, the FCC unanimously voted to shorten the extension by a year. Recent FCC investigations and reports from the Industry Traceback Group indicate that, since STIR/SHAKEN was widely implemented across the largest providers’ networks last year, robocallers have sought to maintain anonymity and avoid enforcement and blocking tools by routing or originating their call traffic on the networks of these largely IP-based* small providers that have not yet implemented STIR/SHAKEN. This has allowed robocalls to pass from these networks to terminating provider networks without carrying forward accurate and standardized caller ID/traceback information. What’s New: Effective today, a problematic gap in FCC robocall rules closed, requiring non-facilities based small voice service providers* to implement STIR/SHAKEN caller ID authentication standards on their networks. These providers are now required to implement STIR/SHAKEN caller ID authentication standards on the IP portion of their networks. The Bigger Picture: Under Chairwoman Rosenworcel’s leadership, the Robocall Response Team was created to serve as an FCC staff working group that pulls together expertise from across the agency to leverage the talents of enforcers, attorneys, policy makers, engineers, economists, and outreach experts to combat the unyielding menace of illegal spoofed, scam, robocalls. This effort has resulted in: · record-breaking spoofing and robocall fines; · closing gateways used by international robocallers to reach Americans’ phones; · widespread implementation of STIR/SHAKEN caller ID authentication standards to help traceback illegal calls and improve blocking tools to protect consumers; · the signing of robocall investigation partnerships with the large majority of state Attorneys General; · and unprecedented policy proposals to combat the rising threat of bogus robotexts. ### Appendix of frequently used terms: · STIR/SHAKEN Caller ID authentication: Caller ID authentication, based on so-called STIR/SHAKEN standards, provides a common information sharing language between networks to verify caller ID information which can be used by robocall blocking tools, FCC investigators, and by consumers trying to judge if an incoming call is likely legitimate or not. · Non-facilities-based voice service providers: A voice service provider is non-facilities based if it offers voice service to end users using connections that are not sold by the provider or its affiliates. Instead, their voice service is transmitted over another provider’s transmission service. · IP-based telephony: IP telephony is shorthand for Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), which is a technology that allows a user to make voice calls using a broadband Internet connection instead of a regular (or analog) phone line. Media Relations: (202) 418-0500 / ASL: (844) 432-2275 / Twitter: @FCC / www.fcc.gov This is an unofficial announcement of Commission action. Release of the full text of a Commission order constitutes official action. See MCI v. FCC, 515 F.2d 385 (D.C. Cir. 1974).
- ericbarrett 4y agoIs this why the number of spam texts I'm getting exploded recently? The scamming of the American public and the degradation of our infrastructure continues apace.
- ceejayoz 4y agoIf they're political - I've been getting a massive uptick in campaign texts - that's because politicians exempted themselves from the spam text rules.
- Glant 4y ago(Not OP) I get about one spam text a day and it's always some vaguely sexual message with a shortened link in it.
- MiddleEndian 4y agoI don't answer my phone, but I've been getting these texts too recently.
- philsnow 4y agoI've also seen a large uptick in the number of them (~1/week vs 0 before), and they're not political, they're mostly scammers pretending to know me. I haven't played along enough yet to learn what they're after, but they're from all kinds of US area codes in places I've never lived.
- ericbarrett 4y agoFor me, real scam texts—mostly bank and Amazon order phishing. I get the political ones too but wasn't even counting them.
- kennywinker 4y agoComing soon - supreme court declares that federal government can’t regulate phone calls because constitution doesn’t give a right to no annoying calls. “It’s up for the states to decide” says majority opinion.
- gowld 4y agoThis action is pursuant to the TRACED Act https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/151 https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/151 > This bill establishes rules and requirements to deter criminal robocall violations. > Specifically, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) must [do stuff related to caller ID]. The bill also implements a forfeiture penalty for violations (with or without intent) of the prohibitions on certain robocalls.
- krisroadruck 4y agoHeh you joke but look up laws related to door-to-door sales. Despite the fact there isn't a homeowner in the country that wants people to physically come on their property, interrupt their day and spam them to their face - it is impossible to get a law passed preventing it.
- vlark 4y agoHave you heard of these things called trespassing laws? And stand your ground laws? Don't need a "no soliciting" law if you got those. All you have to do is say you felt threatened by the salesperson and thought they were going for a gun. /s
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- CWuestefeld 4y agoYou say "there isn't a homeowner in the country that wants people to..." as if that should have some bearing on how the Court determines cases. The job of the Court is not to determine what's good or bad policy, or to react based on people's wishes. The Court's job is to interpret the laws through the lens of the Constitution. If the Constitution doesn't give Congress the authority to do something (as it certainly wouldn't in your example, see Article I Section 8 [1]), it's the job of the Court to strike down the law no matter how many people would like the law. [1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articlei https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articlei
- ohmanjjj 4y agoThere is still a loophole. You get one more year if you are “facilities based”. All you need is one subscriber to whom you also provide broadband connection and you’re covered under the facilities based definition even if you have a thousand other end users over the top.
- jkubicek 4y agoAs a consumer who's cellphone and IP-based landline are effectively useless for incoming phone calls, what can I do to help report these robo calls? We just recently purchased a landline and have told nobody our phone number, so 100% of incoming calls are spam (and we get a few every day). It's amazingly frustrating.
- gonehome 4y agoIf on an iPhone turn on silence unknown callers. It’s an incoming call whitelist, others go to voicemail. This makes this a non issue.
- brian_herman 4y agoYeah on android I saw my friend screen callers. It was built into android.
- Corrado 4y agoThat's one of the things I miss most about moving from a Google Pixel to an iPhone. The Pixel was configured to use Google's call screening service, which would filter unknown callers and make them state the reason for the call. It would then ring my phone and give me the opportunity to answer or send them to voicemail. Neat.
- wl 4y agoThose missed unknown callers still result in a missed call, a voicemail notification, and increase that red badged number, mixed in with missed calls from friends and family I actually care about. It solves the issue of spam callers immediately interrupting what I'm doing, but that's all. I still have to sort through the crap.
- excitom 4y agoTrouble is, some calls go to voicemail that you really wanted - like the doctor's office with your test results or the shop telling you your car is ready.
- nkw 4y agoThis will do absolutely nothing. Since the Supreme Court gutted the TCPA there is zero downside for companies to violate it.
- crhulls 4y agoI'm not too familiar with what the Supreme Court did with TCPA, but as a developer, we were hit by patent-troll equivalents who leveraged the law to shake down companies. In our case, someone's sister invited him to join their account. The text message was initiated by the sister but our system sent the SMS via our backend. We were sued because we allegedly sent an unsolicited text message and were considered an autodialer under TCPA guidelines. We were able to win the suit, but it cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. The law needed a tune up, and if the court decision stopped this type of troll suit some good came of it. I am not defending robocallers. I hope they die. I just highlight that sometimes these laws do need to be tightened up to stop abuse the other way.
- oneoff786 4y agoSo you don’t know what the court did, but one time you had a bad experience with a law, so you’re gonna assume the court did a good thing?
- shagie 4y ago> I'm not too familiar with what the Supreme Court did with TCPA ... June 24, 2021 - https://www.natlawreview.com/article/ripple-effects-supreme-court-s-tcpa-decision-still-developing-companies-using-auto https://www.natlawreview.com/article/ripple-effects-supreme-... > If you work in the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) space, you are certainly aware of the landmark unanimous decision by the United States Supreme Court in Facebook v Duguid, in which the Court narrowed the definition of an automatic telephone dialing system (ATDS) to equipment that has the capacity to either store or produce numbers using a random or sequential number generator. > ... > On June 10, 2021, the District Court for the District of South Carolina held that the Aspect predictive dialer did not qualify as an ATDS because the evidence proved that the system could neither randomly nor sequentially store or produce numbers to be dialed --- So, if you're working from a list of numbers, it's not an ATDS. It is only an ATDS if you're dialing random numbers or sequential numbers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook,_Inc._v._Duguid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook,_Inc._v._Duguid > The Supreme Court's ruling was seen to be favorable to the telemarketing industry, since the decision narrowed the definition of an automatic dialing system of which are regulated under the TCPA. As few actual automated dialers in use at the time of the decision incorporate the random or sequential number generator, telemarketers would be able to use other automatic dialing systems that do not meet this definition to engage in their business, according to the National Consumer Law Center. The National Consumer Law Center as well as Consumer Reports expressed concern that there would be a significant increase in unwanted telemarketing calls due to this decision. > Senator Ed Markey, one of the authors of the TCPA, along with Representative Anna Eshoo, called the ruling "disastrous", as the Congressional intent of the TCPA was "to ban dialing from a database", and announced the same day of the decision that they would be looking to introduce amended legislation to address the Court's decision.
- KennyBlanken 4y ago> How We Got Here: In 2020, the FCC granted voice service providers with 100,000 or fewer subscriber lines an extension of STIR/SHAKEN* implementation requirements, consistent with the TRACED Act. However, since then evidence emerged that a subset of these small voice service providers were originating an increasing quantity of illegal robocalls. shocked pikachu face. Which explains why Canada didn't provide any exemptions. Also, I love this bit from Wikipedia: > The name was inspired by Ian Fleming's character James Bond, who famously prefers his martinis "shaken, not stirred." STIR having existed already, the creators of SHAKEN "tortured the English language until [they] came up with an acronym. "Signature-based Handling of Asserted information using toKENs"
- mulmen 4y agoIs this kind of phased rollout uncommon? It's how the $15.00 minimum wage rolled out in Washington state. CALEA rollout was before my time, I wonder if it had a similar rollout.
- haunter 4y agoWhy is this a thing in the US? Feels like a unique american thing. I’m in Europe and I don’t think I got more than 2 or 3 spam SMS or robocall in the last 20 years.
- labster 4y agoBecause the US Supreme Court has undergone regulatory capture by monied interests.
- InCityDreams 4y ago...and all the many different European courts?
- undersuit 4y agoToo many courts to court. It's why I advocate the US return to the ratio of representatives originally defined in the constitution; harder to bribe ~13,000 representatives than 435.
- yborg 4y ago>harder to bribe ~13,000 representatives than 435 If you're a multibillionaire, not really. And you really just need certain committees and committee heads.
- undersuit 4y agoSo you are arguing it's easier to bribe more people? Interesting argument.
- yourapostasy 4y agoI think they're pointing out XX,000 representatives still doesn't matter if only X00 have functional control over $trillions of budget allocations. Probably need such a broad dispersion and decentralization that you approach a rough high-level facsimile of a UBI before you really blunt the influence your parent post was pointing out.
- CWuestefeld 4y agoA large majority of the phone spam I get is about automotive extended warranties. Shouldn't we be holding that industry responsible for this? Would a campaign of "would you trust someone who spams you for insurance?", and letting the insurers compete on claims that "we'll never try to sell to you over the phone", help?
- blep_ 4y agoDo any of them actually sell extended warranties? I assumed they were scammers. (Also, I wish Nationwide would stop trying to sell to me over the phone. They're amazingly persistent.)
- CWuestefeld 4y agoIf we're guessing that this is all fraud anyway, why would we think that a law against phone spam would be where the spammers draw the line, the crime they're not willing to commit? Won't they keep spamming, just like they're already defrauding?
- blep_ 4y agoOh, you mean the scam "warranty" industry and not the real warranty industry. My mistake.
- CWuestefeld 4y agoI'm not disagreeing with you here. I'm just trying to follow the idea to its conclusion.
- nullc 4y agoBecause of the amount of plausible deniability it gives to their service providers: "We didn't think it was a /scam/ just a legit telemarketing operation."
- bragr 4y ago>Do any of them actually sell extended warranties? I assumed they were scammers. Those are not mutually exclusive. From what I've heard[1], the "extended warranties" are grey market car maintenance insurance that basically exclude everything you might expect from coverage, and anything that might be covered, it's reimbursement only, they don't pay up front. The only thing it is good for is liberating people of their money. [1] https://www.npr.org/transcripts/983109732 https://www.npr.org/transcripts/983109732
- 999900000999 4y agoThe best exclusive feature to Pixel Phones is call screening. Every call has to talk to Google assistant first. Makes up for Google removing HDMI output.
- annoyingnoob 4y agoSigh, got a robocall as I was reading the announcement.
- alberth 4y agoTwilio Hope this curbs spammers ability to use Twilio like services.
- TaylorAlexander 4y agoFascinating that they offer the press release in Docx, PDF, and TXT format but not, you know… HTML format.
- lostmsu 4y agoTheir TXT is a perfectly valid HTML.
- dredmorbius 4y agoThe PDF downloaded as a .bin file which I had to rename to open (on an Android device). Technical competence isn't a strong suit.
- codazoda 4y ago> When people can't trust that callers are who they claim to be, they stop answering even legitimate calls. Yeah, my phone has been defaulted to silent for all callers that are not in my contact list for a dozen years no. I'll never go back to answering calls from people I don't know. On very rare occasions I'll miss a call from someone I did business with that's not in my contact list, but they typically leave messages that I can respond to.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- bragr 4y agoHowever, considering I got 2 of these calls today, I'm not sure how closed it is yet.
- gamblor956 4y agoThe deadline for "gateways" (meaning telephone services providers that receive and forward calls from international numbers) is still next summer. Most spams calls have bene originating through those gateways for the past few months, so this deadline arriving shouldn't have any immediate impact.
- xeromal 4y agoI'm sure the implementation phase is longer than 1 nanosecond.
- jaywalk 4y agoThe press release is pretty poorly-written, but it sounds like today's been the deadline for (at least) a year.
- loeg 4y ago> June 30, 2022—Starting today certain small phone companies must comply with FCC rules to implement caller ID authentication tools on their networks, just as large voice service providers are required to since June 30, 2021. Seems like it's very new for small phone companies, but yeah I agree today seems to be a deadline.
- InitialLastName 4y ago> just as large voice service providers are required to since June 30, 2021. So you're saying that, judging by the 3 spam calls I've gotten today on my (very large) phone carrier, these rules don't do very much.
- 1123581321 4y ago
- ohmanjjj 4y agoThis did absolutely nothing. Carriers like Bandwidth, Commio, Telnyx don’t enforce this and just complete their customers calls as if nothing ever happened.
- ceejayoz 4y agoEnforcement starts tomorrow. June 30 is the deadline for STIR/SHAKEN implementation at small (under 100k subscriber) outfits.
- ohmanjjj 4y agoAlready confirmed with them that absolutely nothing is going to happen.
- ketralnis 4y agoWhat does this mean? You called Bandwidth, Commio, & Telnyx and asked?
- ohmanjjj 4y agoCorrect, we use all 3 for our VoIP business.
- ceejayoz 4y agoI don't think they get to determine whether they get prosecuted by the FCC.
- KennyBlanken 4y agoWhat is your source for this? ("I work in the industry" isn't good enough, in case you're starting to say that.) Link us to some sort of industry news site, or press releases, etc.
- ohmanjjj 4y agoMy source is that we reached out and have high level folks at each carrier saying ain’t nothing gonna change tomorrow or after.