If you’re like most Americans, you hate receiving robocalls. They often hit at the most inopportune time in a matter how many times you block the phone number, they just hit you the next day from a new number. If you’re one of the millions of Americans who get regular robocalls, then we have some good news for you!
The FCC (or the Federal Communications Commission) has officially voted to approve a law that would effectively ban all fraudulent phone robocalls and texts, even international calls, from making their way to your phone. There was already an act in place, called the Truth in Caller ID Act. It was signed into law by Pres. George W. Bush.
While it was a good law while it lasted, it needed to be updated. It only focused on domestic calls made, but did nothing to stop international robocalls. It also did very little to address text messages, which weren’t as big of a thing back then. This new law does ban text messages and international calls as well as allows the FCC to monitor these types of calls. If someone breaks the law, they now have the power to punish any person who calls to peddle their scam.
The FCC Chairman Ajit Pai was the first to bring up this new legislation earlier in the summer. The government agency has been receiving many thousands of calls and complaints consumers sick and tired of the constant robocalls that won’t stop no matter what they do. They even use something called “spoofing” which fakes the area code the scammer is calling from to make it look like a local call.
Too Many Robocalls
AARP recently released an estimation through their Fraud Watch Network that revealed as many as 48 billion Robo calls were made in the last year alone. Those numbers are up as much of 57%, which is just absolutely ridiculous. You know many of the people at the FCC also get plenty of these types of calls, which is why they acted so quickly to get them banned.
Last week the House voted to pass a new law that forces your carrier to authenticate every single call you receive. You’re able to add your phone number to the Do Not Call Registry by visiting donotcall.gov. In order to help enforce this new law, the FTC (or Federal Trade Commission) has stated that they plan to increase enforcement against these types of calls. They are suing many of the companies who make these billions of robocalls each year.
