Democrats and Republicans in Congress agree on few issues these days, but there’s a near-universal hate of spam telephone calls.
The House of Representatives in early December voted 417-3 to pass the Telephone Robocall Abuse Criminal Enforcement and Deterrence Act, a bipartisan bill that attempts to cut down on the tens of billions of unsolicited robocalls made to U.S. telephones and mobile phones every year.
In addition to the annoyance of getting interrupted by an unwanted telephone call over dinner, robocalls are a frequent avenue of scammers. Between January and mid-August, U.S. consumers reported losses of $285.2 million from robocall scams to the Federal Trade Commission, with a median loss of $700. In the same time frame in 2018, consumers reported losses of $239 million.
YouMail, a vendor of robocall-blocking technology, counted 5 billion robocalls sent to U.S. telephone numbers in November alone, a pace of almost 2,000 calls per second. Nearly 47% of those robocalls were related to scams, with another 19% being payment reminders, and 12% being general telemarketing.
YouMail counted nearly 54 billion robocalls sent to U.S. numbers between January and November.
The TRACED Act earned some praise from consumer rights groups, although some questioned whether the bill would have a significant effect on the number of robocalls. The bill would require telephone carriers to implement comprehensive caller ID authentication programs that improve the accuracy of the systems.
The bill would also require the Federal Communications Commission to allow carriers to offer robocalls blocking services, and it would prohibit carriers from separately billing customers for authentication and blocking services.
Also, the bill would require the FCC to investigate how to require voice providers that provide multiple phone numbers to calls (think Google Voice or Skype) to better understand who is using their services. It is an essential step toward stopping robocallers from cycling through multiple numbers to avoid detection, said the National Consumer Law Center.
The TRACED Act “unquestionably moves the fall forward to protect consumers from unwanted robocalls,” said Margot Saunders, senior counsel at the law center.
Saunders raised concerns about a lawsuit by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other groups challenging the FCC’s authority to regulate unsolicited phone calls. The court action would “water down or even nullify” the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, the primary law that gives the FCC its authority in this area, she said.
The bill could have some influence, but “many robocalls would remain effectively untouched,” added Donald E. Petersen, a Florida lawyer who focuses on the TCPA. The bill passed in the House was a compromise between a House bill and a Senate bill, and lawmakers removed some consumer protections from earlier legislation, he said.
Petersen questioned whether authentication and blocking technologies would work as well as backers hope. “Technological solutions, on their own, are unlikely to eliminate robocalls,” he said.
Also, it will be challenging to define high-volume spammers that are subject to law enforcement actions, he said. Callers can “fly below the radar — make fewer calls than the as-yet-undetermined level for enforcement actions against high volume callers,” he added. “For calls originating from offshore VOIP providers, aggregating these numbers seems very challenging, if not daunting.”
The legislation may drive spammers out of the United States but not get rid of them, Petersen added. “To the extent that scammers that rely upon a high volume of calls to feed their funnel have not already moved overseas, they will have additional incentive to do so,” he said.
Cybersecurity consultant Eric Jeffery also questioned the value of the legislation. “I’ve said for over 20 years that technology has to solve technical problems; legislation either can’t or won’t help,” he said. “Consumers need to rise up and pressure carriers, having Congress pass this helps, although I doubt it will reduce the volume of calls.”
Spoofing telephone numbers as a way to hide a caller’s identity is widespread, but identifying a spoofed call is difficult, he said. “This is a well-known problem and an easy technology to deploy,” he added. “Congress can pass all the bills they want. If technology can’t comply, it makes no difference.”
