Consumer Advocates Call for Action to End Illegal Robocalls
Groups Ask FCC, Carriers to Prevent Foreign-Originated Calls
The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) and the National Consumer Law Center (NCLC) filed comments this week with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) asking for action to stop illegal robocalls of foreign origin from reaching American phones by way of “gateway providers.”
“Fraudulent robocalls continue to bombard our telephone lines,” said Margot Saunders, senior attorney at the National Consumer Law Center. “To reduce these invasive and dangerous calls, it is essential that all providers in the call path have more skin in the game.”
As an entry point into the American telephone network for foreign callers, gateway providers and the service providers that accept calls from the gateway providers are in a unique position to arrest the flow of harmful scam calls and illegal robocalls. Many illegal robocalls, especially the worst scam calls, originate overseas and are passed through U.S. gateway providers to complicit intermediary providers and then transmitted to American telephones.
NCLC and EPIC made specific recommendations to protect consumers from these illegal calls, including:
- Make all substantiated tracebacks public…
