All Things Political: Long past time to stop annoying robocalls

Adam Haber

We are all conditioned to answer the phone when it rings. Nobody wants to miss an important call from family, friends or a business associate.

Unfortunately, Long Islanders and the rest of America have been inundated with mass marketing and scam robocalls, up to a dozen times a day.

These calls are both disruptive and annoying especially when they come from a “spoofed” local number, which often fools you into answering the phone.

“Spoofing” is the practice of using a telephone network to trick the receiver into believing the call is from a station different than the originating station.

For example, if you receive a call with a 516 area code, but it’s really coming from outside that area code, it is spoofed.

Often spoofed scam calls are from overseas and difficult to trace. You can register your phone number at the National Do Not Call Registry, www.donotcall.gov, to try and stop the annoying robocalls, but often the registry is ignored. There were 226 million phone numbers on the National Do Not Call Registry as of Sept. 30, 2016.

The New York State Do Not Call Law, which became effective in 2001, allows for residents to put their landline and cell phone number in a central Do Not Call database, to try and limit telemarketing calls.

It is also worth noting that the Federal Trade Commission and Federal Communications Commission created their DNC registry in 2003.

Yet, exempted robocalls from political candidates and surveyors, come every election season, along with charities that are also exempt from being blocked.

That explains the legal but ill-advised late night and early morning mass robocalls from one Nassau County Executive candidate, Democrat George Maragos, in mid-July.

Marketers and scammers easily get around blocked numbers and the DNC registry by changing where the spoofed calls originate.

What’s incredible is that under the “Truth in Calling Act,” the FCC allows for spoof calling if no harm is intended or caused.

That said, there have been recent waves of spoofed robocall scams from a variety of nefarious operators out to do you harm.

They include fake calls from crooks who claim they are from the IRS, or scams involving ATM Skimming, E-mail Tax Returns, College Funds, Medical Devices, Craigslist Employment, After Death (“Ghosting”), Online Dating, Jury Duty, Utilities, Card-Cracking, Funerals, Tax Prep, Post Disaster Organizations, Debt Collection, Airline Tickets and Timeshare Resale.

The most popular nationally spoofed marketing robocalls include free cruises, timeshares, health insurance, air duct cleaning, and pitches to save money on electric bills.

In fact, I just received two of these while writing this article!

According to the website MarketWatch.com Americans receive almost 1,000 robocalls per second, and in July there were a total of 2.64 billion of them.

The state Division of Consumer Protection website states, “Once a consumer’s telephone number has been registered to the DNC registry for 31 days, DNC law prohibits you from calling it. Your business can be fined up to $11,000 per incident by the state Department of State, as well as by the FTC and the FCC.”

I couldn’t find any examples of New York State levying fines or prosecuting robocall operators. State legislators need to pass tougher, enforceable laws against robocallers.

The FCC recently proposed a fine of $120 million to a Miami based timeshare operator who sent out 96 million calls over a three-month period.

They also proposed a fine of $82 million against a North Carolina man who made 21 million illegal calls to sell health insurance.

These proposed fines haven’t deterred the recent wave of marketing and scam robocalls.

In July there was a press release from state Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman, who joined “a bipartisan group of 30 attorneys general…urging the federal government to adopt rules that would allow telephone providers to block illegal robocalls.”

Let’s hope the FCC and FTC are listening.

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