The Federal Communications Commission this year has shut down 1,400 phone companies it alleges failed to protect consumers against unauthorized robocalls, but that hasn’t been enough to stop the number of unwanted calls from rising to a six-year high, according to a report from the CoPIRG Foundation.
Coloradans received an estimated 291.5 million scam or spam robocalls from January through September of this year, according to data from YouMail, a leading robocall-blocking company. And about a third of adults are receiving an unwanted robocall daily, while two-thirds receive them at least once a week. The deluge is even worse when it comes to unwanted texts.
“It is important that when you get a spam text message or phone call that you don’t interact with it. That tells them there is a human on the other end,” advised Danny Katz, executive director for the CoPIRG Foundation, which is focused on consumer protection.
A big reason spam calls and texts are rising despite tougher laws and heftier penalties is that phone companies are still allowing them to go through, sometimes motivated by profit. Artificial intelligence and other technological advances have made sending mass waves of calls cheaper and more effective at breaking through people’s defenses.
Of the 9,242 phone companies that are on file with the FCC as of Sept. 28, only 4,084 have installed mandated robocall-fighting software throughout their network, which is down from 4,365. Another 1,696 have installed the technology on part of their network, while 2,909 have not installed it, up from 2,567 last year, according to the study.
That increase in non-compliance likely reflects more providers getting real about their actual progress, as well as non-compliant firms acquiring smaller firms that had been complying.
A typical call will pass through numerous phone providers. The closer to the origin and the more frequently the required software can tag a call as spam, the better the odds that consumers at the end of the line will be warned, Katz said. The more the spam robocalls are flagged and then ignored, the more likely those behind the calls will give up, and the fewer scam victims there will be.
On Aug. 25, the FCC banned phone companies from accepting calls from 1,203 providers who weren’t complying with tougher rules on handling illegal robocalls, essentially blocking them from the nation’s phone network. It is too early to tell the impact of that crackdown, but plenty of other non-compliant providers remain who are willing to push out illegal robocalls.
Although big providers like Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile, Boost, and Xfinity report full compliance with software implementation, others like AT&T, Cox, CenturyLink and Cox Communications report partial compliance. And hundreds of companies have put no safeguards in place.
Complicating matters, there are legitimate uses for automated calls. Nearly six in 10 robocalls, 57%, are either spam or scams, according to the U.S. PIRG Education Foundation. Of the remainder, most are authorized — such as a notification of a package delivery — while some fall into a gray area, such as that city council candidate you’ve never heard of who has a legal right to interrupt your dinner with a campaign ad.
All phone companies operating in the U.S. must adopt caller ID authentication practices and let the FCC know the status of those efforts. But there is also a technological race underway, with spammers using AI systems to more easily trick consumers who do respond.
That is why Katz advises people not to respond to calls from numbers they don’t recognize and to report any unauthorized robocalls to their carriers by blocking the number.