FCC will ‘take action’ in 2019 if carriers aren’t doing enough to fight robocalls

[STEED]

Originally Posted by Jimbuna

High praise indeed.

Trust me jim I have bought crap in my time and still doing it now!

This is one product that was easy to set up and do what it states it would do. No I am not a sales person..

It's just one of those few things I took the gamble on and it paid off.


Getting back on topic its taken years for phone companies like BT to wake up and smell the coffee. BT is now getting to grips with this just hope all the rest are as well.

The days of..."Hello you have a virus on your PC"...are coming to an end. The dumb scammer days are over and the clever scammers move in and they sound convincing!

[Jimbuna]

I'll ask the wife for permission to start saving up for one because she is the most likely to be taken in by this sort of crap.

[STEED]

Originally Posted by Jimbuna

I'll ask the wife for permission to start saving up for one because she is the most likely to be taken in by this sort of crap.

...Lets see what the Dragons say about that.

[Jimbuna]

That must be one happy Dragon now.

[Onkel Neal]

The only robocalls I've gotten lately were from Beto's Senate campaign. Thankfully, that has now stopped.

After years of worsening robocalls, a bipartisan group of senators has introduced a bill today that would levy greater penalties on people and groups that place the scammy and sometimes malicious calls.

The TRACED Act, sponsored by Sens. John Thune (R-SD), Ed Markey (D-MA), and Roger Wicker (R-MS), would dramatically increase the penalty per robocall to up to $10,000. Previously, violators were charged with up to $1,500 per call. Currently, the Federal Communications Commission can only prosecute violators over inauthentic calls that were placed in the past year. This bill increases that time frame to three years. In previous letters to the senators, the commission said that “even a one-year longer statute of limitations for enforcement. . . would improve the Commission’s enforcement efforts against knowing and willful violators.”

Earlier this year, the FCC inflicted a $120 million fine on a robocall kingpin. It was one of the largest fines ever implemented for robocall violations, and it signified that the federal government would prioritize lessening the burden of these calls on consumers. This bill generally gives the FCC more power to act on these calls, and this new power has the potential to dissuade others from placing them.

https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/16/...ies-traced-act

[em2nought]

THIS and charities hitting up senior citizens with junk "real" mail are two of my BIG pet peeves. Running a mini storage, I have to answer my phone no matter what. I get fake google calls all the time. The RNC aren't on my favorites list either. Also being partners with a few truck drivers who call me when they need somebody to keep them awake isn't my favorite way to pass my day, since I'm not a multi-tasker I don't get anything else done when that happens. lol My mother is getting on in years and I'm afraid of what somebody might trick her into on the phone. I really need to fix that, but she's stubborn. I think I'll still be getting junk "real" mail for her when I finally die someday. I blew my top last year when she made a contribution in my name. Only my worst enemy would do something like that, my sister had to calm me down over the phone. I never lose my cool, must have been a breaking point.



The day I can take my US smart phone and toss it in a lake is the day I look forward to like no other, LIKE NO OTHER.

[vienna]

One thing that has really been bugging me lately is robocallers are increasing the tactic of making calls directly to voicemail, by passing even having to call your phone directly. It is annoying when you see you've got, say two missed calls, and five voicemail messages, and most of the voice mail messages are from robcallers. You can't even block them because the number that shows up is almost always the number for your voicemail account. This article describes the practice:

New robocall tactic? Skip the ring and go straight to your voicemail --

https://komonews.com/news/consumer/n...your-voicemail

...and I'm not at all pleased with the exemption the government gave itself to allow them to make robocalls for their own political purposes. Fortunately, since I have no party affiliation, I don't get such calls, but I still think such calls are only self-serving and do not rise to the level of an essential such as emergency notifications, etc. ...

...and, here in CA, there have lately been robocalls by swindlers posing as firefighter charities soliciting contributions to aid the firefighters on the lines fighting the current disastrous wild fires; the local media have warned that the calls are frauds, but who knows how many gullible people will make contributions to those hucksters...








<O>

[em2nought]

Originally Posted by vienna

...and I'm not at all pleased with the exemption the government gave itself to allow them to make robocalls for their own political purposes.<O>

On that we can definitely agree!