Inside your phone company’s plan to stop robocalls

September 2, 2019

Spam and robocalls are such a nuisance and a widespread problem -- Americans endured over 26 billion of them in 2018 -- that the FCC has stepped in, fining four companies responsible for billions of robocalls. Stopping robocalls on your own is one thing, but the FCC has also tasked the communications industry with curbing the number of robocalls we all receive on a daily basis. Recently, 12 phone companies and 51 state attorneys general announced a plan to implement technology to identify, and eventually block robocalls. This is where STIR/SHAKEN (also called SHAKEN/STIR) comes in.

SHAKEN/STIR is a two-pronged protocol that AT&T and T-Mobile will use to verify that the incoming caller is legit. It will also work with home phones running on Comcast’s service. The end result is that Comcast, T-Mobile and AT&T will authenticate caller ID among one another, so you have more assurance that the person who’s calling you is real.