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Appeals Court Nixes Some FCC Rules on Robocalls

posted by cmn32480 on Saturday March 17 2018, @04:32PM   
from the thanks-a-lot-you-nimnobs dept.

"exec" writes:

An appeals court threw out part of a Federal Communications Commission regulation aimed at reducing automated telephone solicitations, weakening a 2015 effort to squelch the scourge of so-called robocalls.

The rule was aimed at calls generated by auto-dialing devices. But its language was too broad, and could be construed to prohibit calls from any smartphone, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled in a unanimous opinion Friday.

[...] Unwanted calls, including robocalls, are the top consumer complaint to the FCC, with more than 200,000 such comments received annually, according to the agency. Some private analyses estimate that U.S. consumers received about 2.4 billion robocalls per month in 2016.

[...] Because under the FCC's rule "any uninvited call or message from the device is a statutory violation," regular smartphone users could face a $500 penalty for calls -- such as inviting a person to a party -- without first getting consent to contact them, the judges said.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-16/u-s-robocall-limits-partly-tossed-out-by-federal-appeals-court

-- submitted from IRC

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Original Submission

• This isn't a hard problem to solve This isn't a hard problem to solve (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 17 2018, @10:39PM (1 child)

  by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 17 2018, @10:39PM (#654250)

  All they need to do is to hold telecoms accountable for what spoofed numbers do if they can't identify the caller. And if phone users were offered the option to only have the phone ring for calls in their phone book.

  Those two measures alone would more or less kill the industry that makes money through unauthorized calls. Personally, it's beyond me why Google doesn't allow Android users to silence any calls from people not in my phonebook, it's not exactly rocket surgery.

• Re:This isn't a hard problem to solve (Score: 3, Informative) by DavePolaschek on Monday March 19 2018, @01:39PM

  by DavePolaschek (6129) on Monday March 19 2018, @01:39PM (#654879) Homepage Journal

  And if phone users were offered the option to only have the phone ring for calls in their phone book.

  Set your default ringtone to silent. For everyone in your phone book, set the ringtone to [something not silent].

  There, I fixed it for you.

  Oh, you'll probably have to set your own number to a silent ringtone, though. 90% of the spam calls I get are from (MYNPA) MYNXX-ABCD and close to half are coming from my own phone if caller-ID is to be believed.

  Parent