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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.
(Score: 2) by Nuke on Saturday September 29 2018, @08:54AM (1 child)
So are you people saying that you could create a whitelist? Surely that can be done with existing systems, or am I wrong? Genuine question, I've never tried it, and believe it may need a special phone or special contract with the phone company.
(Score: 2) by Subsentient on Saturday September 29 2018, @02:10PM
It's possible on some phones and VoIP stuff, but it's not uniform and not well supported.
This would fix that.
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Jiddu Krishnamurti