FCC wants phone companies to block automated calls by default: NPR

If the new government plan works, the number of automated calls you receive may decrease in the near future.

The Federal Communications Commission is proposing to push the telephone companies to "block unwanted calls to their customers by default".

If adopted, the proposal would not require the telephone companies to impose default calling blocks. But this would protect telecommunications operators from any legal liability for blocking certain calls.

"The American people are fed up with illegal automated calls, which is the main complaint we receive from consumers every year," FCC President Ajit Pai told reporters. "And we think we need to help phone companies block these automated calls more easily."

This would be a major change from now on, so that customers usually have to activate blocking unwanted calls. According to the proposal, "operators should simply allow consumers who do not want this type of service to withdraw," Pai said.

He said that would be comparable to the way email providers filter messages into spam folders. The FCC is pushing phone companies to use an authentication framework to block unwanted calls called "SHAKEN / STIR". This is a way for the phone companies to verify that a call is coming from the caller ID.

The YouMail call blocker publishes automated call estimates nationally every month. It estimates at 4.9 billion the number of calls made in April 2019, a rate of 14.9 calls per person.

"Our belief is that more than half of the automated calls are scams," said Alex Quilici, an automated call expert and CEO of YouMail. "Spoofed" calls are a growing problem, that is, they hide their identity according to the identity of the caller.

USTelecom, a professional group representing telecommunications providers, applauded the FCC's proposal.

"Criminals who cheat consumers with this stream of illegal automated calls must face the sector head-on," Group President and Chief Executive Officer Jonathan Spalter said in a statement. "This is an ambitious and bold proposal from the FCC that can strengthen our industry's leading call blocking and authentication efforts and do something important: prevent unsolicited calls from reaching consumers." . "

The FCC has already encouraged companies to take stronger action against fraudulent automated calls.

However, it can be difficult for companies to know which automated calls are actually scams and which contain information that a consumer would like to obtain, for example automatic calls regarding school closure.

And, according to Quilici, one of the challenges in ending endless automated calls is that companies have been reluctant to assume legal responsibility for blocking calls requested by customers.

"What we're seeing is that there's a whole range of things that people are comfortable with blocking," he told NPR.

Quilici said that it was safe to assume that everyone would want to block fraudulent calls. But other types are less clear. For example, some people want to receive automated payment reminders from credit card companies, while others prefer to block these calls.

And then there are extreme examples, he added, that could have made suppliers reluctant to adopt radical measures in the past that could expose them to legal liability: "It's the fear that you block a number Grandma calls and has a heart attack. "

"It is very important that the proposal clearly states that emergency calls and other vital calls are not blocked and that operators are providing consumers with ample information about these services and methods," Pai told reporters.

The FCC has not yet released the details of its proposal, including the types of guidelines that the agency will provide to businesses to determine if a call is "requested" or "unwanted".

Will Wiquist, a spokesman for the FCC, said the call blocking programs "would be based on reasonable analysis, such as current call blocking applications." He said the scans were aimed at ending scams and looking for patterns such as "calls on the network or many short calls". Wiquist added that the proposal would allow some flexibility as to which items to block or which customers to withdraw completely.

The FCC proposal would also allow vendors to offer customers a form of blocking even more aggressive than the default option. If successful, customers could choose a filtering system that would only allow calls from numbers in their contacts, dubbed a "whitelist".

"Number of #automated calls we get is crazy. Too long @FCC lost time organizing workshops and summits instead of blaming bad actors, "said FCC Commissioner. Jessica Rosenworcelwho is a democrat
"Today, he is finally proposing new policies to help block automated calls.I sincerely hope that it is not too little, too late."

The FCC will review this proposal at a meeting on June 6. Mr Pai, a Republican, said he hoped that this solution would give consumers the "peace of mind they deserve".