Is there finally more help in fighting automated calls?

New tools are coming in to combat automated calls, but do not expect unwanted calls to go away.

The political stalemate could derail bills aimed at strengthening law enforcement and forcing the telephone companies to do more. Businesses have been slow to act alone against such automated calls. And while companies are implementing better technologies, fraudsters and telemarketers will succeed in an endless arms race.

"We make things work really well, we see all these calls as scams, and then the scammers find a new way," said Grant Castle, vice president of engineering at T-Mobile. . "We have to adapt, it's a constant back-and-forth."

Nevertheless, we hope that the new efforts of the Federal Communications Commission and industry will help you avoid several automated calls, even if they will not disappear completely. In a scheduled vote on Thursday with big implications, the FCC says that phone companies can block many unsolicited calls without first asking customers.

Telephone scams cost the victims millions of dollars. And they disturb the institutions, not just your dinner. A hospital in Florida, the Moffitt Cancer Center, received 6,600 calls in 90 days, seeming to come from inside the hospital, which allowed its staff to spend 65 hours of its time in the care patients.

The aggravation is not limited to fraudsters claiming to belong to the IRS or Social Security. Blocking calls YouMail estimates that about one-third of automated calls come from collection companies and companies that organize cruises or insurances.

The problem of automated calls has exploded, as cheap software facilitates mass calls. Fraudsters do not care if you added your number to the government's no-call list.

However, the sanctions against the illegal appellants are negligible. Federal agencies have sentenced scammers to fines amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars, but this has been difficult to collect. Most callers are abroad. It's hard to throw cheaters into jail.

As a result, automated robbery and legitimate business appeals have reached $ 5 billion per month in the United States, according to YouMail. This equates to 14 calls per person.

That's almost double the 2.7 billion automated calls made in November 2017, when the government allowed mobile phone companies such as Verizon and T-Mobile to block some problematic calls that are definitely scams, such as They had started with the 911 area code.

Mobile operators are setting up a fake number identification system and have deployed call blocking applications. But they have not done much else, worried about their own legal responsibility in case of accidental blocking of calls that should go through.

The rules that the FCC should approve Thursday could generalize the blocking of calls. However, operators would still not have to block the default calls and they could also bill them, just as they now charge for some caller ID and other extras.

FCC President Ajit Pai believes that mobile operators will be encouraged to launch and offer these services for free.

"These automated calls that are placed on their own networks are a chore and a cost to manage for them," Pai said in an interview.

He added that he hoped that this measure would help consumers avoid all unwanted calls, not just illegal scams.

This worries businesses and institutions that make such calls. The Royal Credit Union, a small bank in the US Midwest, said that a widespread call blocking would make fraud alerts and low-pay warnings more difficult to reach customers. Customers "expect us to contact them in certain situations," said CEO Brandon Riechers.

Another angle of attack is to get rid of the "usurped" numbers. It is then that a scammer simulates the number on your phone to give it the impression that it comes from the same area code as you, to convince you to take it back.

The industry is working on a system that will ensure that the number of phone calls is real. This is just beginning, and to be successful, all carriers must implement it. The government has no deadline, but Pai has threatened to take regulatory action if it does not happen this year.

The Senate, with almost unanimous support, passed a bill in May that would give carriers 18 months and give regulators more tools to deal with fraudsters. But the way in which the bill will take place in the Democrat-controlled House, which contains several anti-appeal proposals that go further, is unclear.

New technologies should help tackle the problem, but the government must force carriers to implement it, "said Dave Summitt, Moffitt's Cyber ​​Security Officer.

"We can not do it ourselves," he said. "We need help."

He believes that the Congress must oblige the operators to prevent the usurped numbers from appearing on their phones. But he is also concerned that organizations like his own will have to rebuild their telecommunication systems for this technology to work.

Even when this system is launched, there are problems. T-Mobile has deployed the system for calls between its customers, but it does not work on iPhones yet. Traditional copper telephone lines will also be left out.

And scammers and determined telemarketers will probably find ways to pass, as they are able to sneak through defenses. Think about how malware on PCs is still a problem despite antivirus software. The government's registry of out-of-box numbers has existed since 2003, but Americans still receive billions of unwanted calls.

Automated callers could bypass new security measures by purchasing real numbers and using them to call you. They could hack into companies and hack phone lines and then use them to call, said T-Mobile Castle. He said that he has already seen this happen.