Phone Companies Get New Tools To Block Spam Calls (cnbc.com)

An anonymous reader shares a report: Phone companies will have greater authority to block questionable calls from reaching customers as regulators adopted new rules to combat automated messages known as robocalls. Rules adopted Thursday by the Federal Communications Commission represent the latest tools against "robocalls," which pester consumers, sometimes multiple times each day, and often push scams. Phone companies can already block some calls that trick consumers by showing up on Caller ID with fake numbers. The new rules make clear that they can block additional calls that are likely scams, such as numbers that start with a 911 area code, or one that isn't currently assigned to anyone.

Comments

Re:Personal "favorite" robocall

[olsmeister]

I haven't seen that one, but I have seen a huge increase in robocallers spoofing local numbers because I'm much more likely to answer one of those calls.

Political calls excepted

[Okian Warrior]

Are political calls still exempt from the rules?

My favorite is the one offering between $5000 and $7000 for any women willing to make damaging accusations about Roy Moore

I hate all robocalls, including political ones, and don't see why they should be exempt from the rules.

Also: Don't we hate the FCC because of the net neutrality thing? Has that changed?

Re:Political calls excepted

[Anonymous Coward]

The robocall in question is most likely "damage control" by Moore's supporters, in order to discredit the source of information. "Washington Post is bribing women to come forward!" would be a good story to have for why everyone should still vote for Moore.

Re:Personal "favorite" robocall

[Anonymous Coward]

I simply don't answer calls from numbers not in my contacts unless I'm specifically expecting a call, and then it'd better be from an area code that makes sense. If it's important and I don't answer, they'll leave a message.

Re:What about VOIP and cell phone providers?

[dgatwood]

That's fine. The telephone company that bridges those calls to the public phone network should have a whitelist of allowed caller IDs, and if you need to add numbers specific to your business to that whitelist, you should have to provide a very narrow list of allowed numbers to that upstream provider, and a real, live person should have to verify that those numbers really are yours before they allow them through. And it should cost $ to get each new number whitelisted.

Allowing anyone to provide any arbitrary number is complete and utter incompetence, and everyone scammed by these people probably have a legal right to file a very $$$$$$ contributory negligence suit against the scammer's upstream telecom provider for not blocking the fake caller IDs.