CHARLESTON, WV (WVDN) — Attorney General JB McCuskey and 48 other attorneys general 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.
“These recommendations will help cutdown on robocalls, that are not only annoying, they’re also dangerous. Every day, people fall victim to scams through robocalls. I will do everything in my power to help combat these scammers and stop as many calls as possible,” Attorney General McCuskey said.
Last year, Americans received approximately 29.6 billion scam robocalls and texts and lost nearly $2 billion to these scams. Scammers used to illegally “spoof” 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 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 McCuskey is joined in signing the letter by the attorneys general of Alabama, Alaska, American Samoa, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.
