The commission is requesting assistance with efforts to trace the calls connected to providers’ networks as part of continued efforts to end the practice.
11/6/2018 10:30
The Federal Communications Commission is calling on voice provider companies not involved with “traceback” efforts targeted at illegal robocalls start those processes.
FCC Enforcement Bureau Chief Rosemary Harold and Chief Technology Officer Eric Burger issued letters to voice providers Tuesday, including those the FCC has encouraged to do more to guard against illegal traffic, according to a news release.
These traceback efforts assist the FCC in identifying the source of illegal calls, according to the FCC.
“It is vital that public and private stakeholders work together to combat scam calls,” Harold said. “It hinders both FCC enforcement and industry call authentication work when companies do not cooperate with traceback efforts. We must do everything we can to catch and stop scammers, and industry cooperation is vital to achieving that goal.”
As the FCC and industry move forward on call authentication, consistent participation of all network operators is critical for helping consumers and enforcing the law.
“A critical component of effective enforcement against robocalling and spoofing abuses is to quickly identify the source of the traffic by tracing back the calls to their origination,” Harold and Burger wrote in the letters.
As the FCC continues to review the impact of call blocking and labeling technologies on legitimate businesses communicating with consumers through requests for comment, ACA International is continuing its advocacy efforts to encourage policymakers to develop protocols and/or a regulatory framework that would require call blocking and labeling companies to create a system to differentiate between legal informational calls and illegal robocallers.
While ACA supports regulations to stop illegal robocalls that harm consumers and legitimate businesses, allowing use of far-from-perfect technologies for call blocking has already proven to result in important legitimate communications not being received.
ACA also submitted comments to the FCC’s Consumer and Government Affairs Bureau Oct. 8.
The comments argue that allowing carriers to block legal calls without any recourse available to legitimate callers is an unfair and unbalanced approach. At the same time, it is clear that blanket blocking of calls has not decreased the amount of illegitimate calls. Alternatively, there is evidence that legitimate calls are continuing to be blocked which have raised concerns about consumer harm when they do not receive the information they need.
ACA encourages its members to continue report their experiences related to call blocking and call labeling on ACA’s online Call Blocking Intake Form.
ACA believes that through these reasonable mitigation measures, the FCC will achieve a better balance of protecting consumers from unlawful robocalls while ensuring consumers are not inadvertently losing access to important communications with legitimate businesses.
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FCC Needs to Implement Comprehensive Rules Before Call Blocking and Labeling Continues
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