AG Labrador Pushes Federal Government to Further Crackdown on Illegal Robocalls

BOISE, ID - Attorney General Raúl Labrador and 48 other attorneys general today called on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to strengthen rules that would cut off scammers' access to legitimate telephone numbers. Without that access, scammers can't use real numbers to deceive and scam Americans. The Anti-Robocall Multistate Litigation Task Force asked the FCC to work on this issue in 2021, and members of this coalition are now responding to the FCC's proposed rules.

"Idahoans are tired of scammers swindling their families and flooding their phones with non-stop robocalls," said Attorney General Labrador. "My Consumer Protection Division works daily to educate people on how to avoid scams, but we need to hold telecom providers accountable at the source for allowing that illegal traffic in the first place. I am urging the FCC strengthen it's rules to cut off scammers before they can target Idaho families."

Last year, Americans received approximately 29.6 billion scam robocalls and texts and lost nearly $2 billion to these scams. Scammers used to primarily illegally "spoof" other people's phone numbers to make it look like a call was coming from a legitimate company or government agency. But scammers can't easily do this anymore after the federal government and state attorneys general took action to cut down on illegal spoofing. Now, scammers often purchase legitimate phone numbers and use them to make robocalls.

While most legitimate businesses use the same phone number for many years, scammers cycle through millions of brand new phone numbers, which helps them avoid detection by spam filters. In one North Carolina case, scammers made more than 17.3 million calls on a single day through one phone company - but they generally didn't use the same number more than twice to make those calls, which is a common tactic among scammers.

In addition to the steps the FCC is already taking, the bipartisan attorneys general are asking the federal government to do more, including:

• Require every company that is authorized to purchase and then resell phone numbers in North America to meet stronger certification rules and share how and to whom they are assigning numbers.
• Require these companies to submit regular reports about the sale and use of numbers, so law enforcement can trace illegal robocalls back to the source. These reports will also help law enforcement hold all the companies in the call path accountable for selling or transmitting numbers used to conduct illegal robocalls.
• Require people and entities that are applying to access phone numbers to confirm that they won't use them to make illegal robocalls.
• Block the sale of phone numbers to entities that aren't tied to a calling or texting service. Robocallers often buy these numbers without linking them to a legitimate phone service, since they don't plan on using the numbers for legitimate calling and texting purposes.
• Prohibit number cycling, which is when an entity buys lots of numbers and then uses them on a rotating, sometimes single-use basis to avoid being detected by tools that flag numbers used to make illegal robocalls.
• Restrict the offering of trial numbers to discourage scammers from taking advantage of them to harm consumers.

Attorney General Labrador encourages Idahoans to visit ReportScamsIdaho.com for more resources on reporting, identifying and avoiding scams, or to file a consumer protection complaint.