Phone companies hate robocalls, too

Sunday Strategist

I received nine robocalls this week. Last week, it was 11. My voicemail is full of concerned telemarketers letting me know that I'm a "strong candidate" to have my student loans forgiven, that I qualify for "medical-grade braces" (for my teeth? my legs?), that I can make $6,000 per month working for a website called dataentryjob.org that I'm not going to visit because I'm not an idiot, and that I've qualified for a free cruise. Of the 26.3 billion robocalls that Americans received in 2018, I'd estimate that I personally received a billion of them. It feels that way, at least.

Phone companies hate robocalls, too. They clog their networks, they inspire people to write angry, all-caps emails to customer support, and they lead the rest of us to never answer our cell phones unless we know who's calling. Last week twelve of the largest companies in the U.S. (including AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile) announced they were joining forces with 51 state attorneys general to make it more difficult for robocallers to spoof phone numbers (which makes them look like they're coming from your area code). The technology, referred to by its acronym STIR/SHAKEN, double-checks a phone call's digital signature to make sure it's coming from the number it claims to be and alerts you if it isn't.

This will help millions of people. According to the call-blocking app TrueCaller, nearly one in 6 Americans has fallen for a phone scam, shelling out $10.5 billion—roughly what Netflix spends on its original content—in just the last year. A study of phone scams by the FTC found that older people were more likely to respond to fake prize promotions, while millennials drowning in student debt are willing to try anything, including giving away their personal details over the phone, in order to get their loans reduced.

Here's the thing though. STIR/SHAKEN will help people identify spam calls, but it can't actually stop telemarketers from calling. Right now, the only way to reduce the number of robocalls you receive is to install a third party app or sign up for your service provider's call-blocking protection program, both of which usually cost a few dollars per month. A particularly fun app is RoboKiller, which keeps telemarketers on the line with a President Trump impersonator (there are other options) and then sends you recordings of the ridiculous calls to listen to at your leisure. It won't actually save you time, but at least it's amusing.

Technically, we shouldn't be getting these calls in the first place. The Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) prohibits automatic calls to cell phones, except in cases of emergency or if the recipient of the call has consented. Last year, 235.3 million people joined the national Do Not Call list, the most since the list was created in 2003. The TCPA also says telemarketers aren't allowed to dial anyone on the list, but I've been registered for years and I'm still getting calls every day.

The plan to identify robocalls only works if the government is willing to crack down on the companies that place them. That's where the 51 state attorneys general come in. They pledge to investigate and take action against telemarketers violating the law. The federal government is also getting involved. Earlier this year the FTC settled lawsuits with four telemarketing companies for allegedly asking people to donate to a fake veterans' charity and tricking small business owners into paying to show up in Google's search results, among other things. Last year the FCC fined a health insurance company $82 million for making 21 million robocalls (or about $3.90 per call).

Most phone companies haven't implemented STIR/SHAKEN yet so it'll be a while before we know if it meaningfully reduces the number of robocalls. If it doesn't, they'll have to try something else. Maybe they could offer us all a free cruise.