FCC Combats Spoofed Robocalls

April 18, 2017

As part of an initiative that would enable voice service providers to better protect subscribers from illegal and fraudulent robocalls, the Federal Communications Commission has released a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) and Notice of Inquiry (NOI).

“Despite FCC and other protections to help consumers avoid unwanted robocalls, consumers still get an unacceptably high volume of calls that can annoy or defraud,” the agency explained in a fact sheet. “One particularly pernicious category of robocalls is spoofed robocalls—i.e., robocalls where the caller ID is faked, hiding the caller’s true identity. Fraudsters bombard consumers’ phones at all hours of the day with spoofed robocalls, which in some cases lure consumers into scams (e.g., when a caller claims to be collecting money owed to the Internal Revenue Service) or lead to identify theft…”