CHARLESTON — West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey and other AGs are urging the Federal Communications Commission to put in place measures that will help stem the tide of foreign-based illegal robocalls that are used to attempt to scam Americans.
“Robocalls continue to be an annoyance we all face, and our office is happy to partner with attorneys general from other states to urge major players in communications to stop these frustrating calls,” Morrisey said January 10 in a press release. “Our goal is to stop scammers overseas from preying upon American consumers as we continue fighting robocalls.”
Morrisey and a bipartisan group of 50 other AGs are calling for the FCC to require gateway providers – the companies that allow foreign calls into the United States – to take steps to reduce how easily robocalls have been able to enter the U.S. telephone network, including implementing STIR/SHAKEN, a caller ID authentication technology that helps prevent spoofed calls.
Gateway providers should be required to implement this technology within 30 days of it becoming a rule to help eliminate spoofed calls and to make sure that international calls that originate from U.S. telephone numbers are legitimate.
In December, Morrisey and a coalition of 51 attorneys general successfully helped to persuade the FCC to shorten by a year the deadline for smaller telephone companies to implement STIR/SHAKEN.
The AGs are asking the FCC to require these gateway providers to take additional measures to reduce robocalls, including:
- Responding to requests from law enforcement, state attorneys general, or the FCC to trace back calls within 24 hours.
- Blocking calls when providers are aware of an illegal or likely fraudulent caller.
- Blocking calls that originate from numbers that are on a “do not originate” list – such as government phone numbers that are for incoming calls only.
- Ensuring that foreign telephone companies they partner with are guaranteeing that calls are being made from legitimate numbers.
In 2020, Americans lost more than $520 million through robocall scams.
The comment letter to the FCC, dated January 10, was led by the attorneys general of North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Arkansas. The AGs of all 50 states plus the AG for the District of Columbia sent the letter to the FCC.
