Update on the Robocall Fight Front
When the Do Not Call List was created we thought that would end telemarketing calls. But we were wrong, on two counts: scammers do not care about breaking the law and technology has made it easy to make millions of calls cheaply. Americans receive several millions robocalls every day. Calls are on track to top 60 billion this year! Seniors, in particular, are targets.
In an earlier blog about phones and danger to seniors I made the following recommendations:
- Do not answer calls from numbers not recognized; let them go into voicemail
- Do not answer questions over the phone
- Do not confirm the phone number or anything else over the phone
- Never give out personal information
But in August an agreement between the 12 of the largest telephone companies and the attorneys general nationwide was made to spot and block robocalls. This gives us hope. Under this agreement, these carriers agreed to implement call-blocking technology, make anti-robocall tools available for free to consumes and deploy a new system that would label calls as real or spam. The technology’s acronym is STIR/SHAKEN (after James Bond). It takes on the spoofing which enables scammers to disguise their identities by using phone numbers that have the same first six digits as the phone subscriber leading the person to think a neighbor might be calling and thus answer the call. There is no deadline to complete this work but the “expectation is they will all implement them as soon as practical.” Additionally, it is expected that this new technology will assist the government in finding and penalizing these scammers.
What to do now?
- Sign up on the Do Not Call registry; it’s far from perfect but it may help.
- Check with your smartphone provider to see if they have the technology in place and if not, find out when they expect to do so.
- Get a robocall blocking app. Often for less than $25 per year, customers can have a call blocking for both their home and mobile phones. It is kind of a “LifeLock” for phone calls. The most common apps are: Nomorobo, Robokiller, Truecaller and You Mail.
How they work: technology and databases of illegal robocalls enables the incoming call to be verified. If legitimate, allows the call to go through. If the call is not legitimate, they block the call and notify the caller that the number has been blocked. It takes a few weeks for the system to take hold and after a few calls may still get through but my personal experience has told me they are few and far between. The peace of mind they provide is well worth the $20 per year I pay.
