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State Attorneys Urge FCC To Combat Neighborhood Spoofing (biglawbusiness.com)

Posted by msmash on from the do-something-already dept.

Attorneys general from 35 states are urging the Federal Communications Commission to allow telephone companies to block illegally manipulated calls that appear to come from consumers' neighborhoods. From a report: The rule change could help reduce "spoofed" calls from numbers with the same area code as the consumer, or even calls from the consumer's own number. Combating junk marketing calls has been a top consumer protection priority for FCC Chairman Ajit Pai. The FCC last November adopted a set of robocall rules that allowed telephone companies to proactively block calls from invalid, unassigned or unused numbers. The agency then sought public comments on empowering telephone companies further. The attorneys general want to the FCC to create new rules specifically targeting neighborhood spoofing, they said in comments filed Oct. 9 with the agency.

3 of 202 comments (clear)

  1. Why not block all unverified POTS spoofing? by Etcetera · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I realize certain infrastructure bits need to be able to do this, but why not a regulation that requires outbound data be verified to be under the control of the "real" sending entity? A service (Skype, say) initiating an outbound call with a user-entered number must first validate control (voice call or SMS, etc) and record/audit such validation before putting injecting it into the POTS.

    Make that a best-practice at the ITU, but enforce it by regulation for domestic.

    That just leaves international calls as suspect (which has long been the case anyways) and international-but-still-in-NANPA calls as notable (ditto).

    --
    Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
    1. Re:Why not block all unverified POTS spoofing? by SoonerSkeene · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I work in an inbound-only call center (tech support for web host). If we call a client back, we spoof our number so the number they see on their caller ID is the same toll free number they called to reach us in the first place. We used to not do this, and every outbound call looked like it came from somewhere in Colorado (we're in Oklahoma), so it helped our customers in more than one way. First, they recognize it's us calling them back about their ticket, and two, they can call the number they saw on caller ID and reach us again. Previously the Colorado local number they saw went nowhere, it was just some bulk trunk line owned by Verizon and leased by our call ACD routing cloud software company. I'd argue it was worse for our clients when we couldn't spoof. They had no idea who was calling them, they get dead-air if they tried to call it back. Having said that, I'm sick of death of getting these "looks local" telemarketing recorded sales pitches, so much that I essentially treat phone calls like email now: safe senders only. If you aren't in my address book head of time, my phone doesn't even ring anymore. It's insane. I must get 3 a day.

  2. Re:Junk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    If you castrate them then unix win, amirite?