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posted by mrpg on Friday September 28 2018, @03:40AM   Printer-friendly
from the bills-to-pay dept.

FCC Hangs Blockbuster $37.5 Million Fine Over Robocaller Accused of Spoofing Real Numbers:

The FCC has announced its proposal to impose a fine of $37.5 million on a company accused of making robocalls and hiding the calls' origin behind the real phone numbers of consumers. The agency is attempting to show that it's cracking down on the out of control robocall industry, but critics say it's too little, too late.

On Wednesday, the FCC said that it was alerted by a whistleblower about the robocall practices of an Arizona-based company called Affordable Enterprises. According to the announcement, the company "made more than 2.3 million maliciously-spoofed telemarketing calls to Arizonans during a 14-month span starting in 2016 to sell home improvement and remodeling services."

Spoofing is the term for using various techniques to display a different phone number on a robocall target's caller-ID than the number that's actually being used by the caller. What makes the Affordable Enterprises case different is that it's accused of intentionally using phone numbers that belong to consumers. This makes it hard to file a complaint against the company and leads to confused Americans fielding angry phone calls out of the blue.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 28 2018, @12:45PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 28 2018, @12:45PM (#741307)

    > "This is Windows calling...

    Lucky you, may they leave you in peace going forward.
    We got one yesterday, seems we get a couple of these per week.