Scam Communications Need to Be a National Priority, Task Force Says
Given the deluge of financial scam calls, texts and emails that Americans constantly receive, Congress needs to clarify the enforcement authority that the FCC and other agencies have over abuse of communications channels, said the National Task Force on Fraud and Scam Prevention. The task force, convened by the Aspen Institute, issued a report Wednesday that proposes a national public-private strategy to prevent scam calls.
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The report followed an issue brief Tuesday from the National Consumer Law Center (NCLC), a member of the task force, laying out a series of recommendations to reduce scam calls via increased regulatory pressure on VoIP providers. Other task force members include AT&T, Apple, CTIA, Google, Mediacom and Verizon.
The group's report suggested that Congress and the White House should consider ways to promote private-sector participation in anti-scam detection. That might include regulatory agencies, including the FCC, creating programs or gateways to connect smaller entities with information exchanges, it said.
The task force also recommended that telecommunications, financial services and digital platform companies maintain "robust" anti-scam policies, including sufficient budgeting, and improve identity verification and authentication to block inauthentic actors. It urged investment in private information exchanges with companies in other sectors.
In addition, the federal government should elevate scam prevention as a national priority, with dedicated resources and coordination mechanisms such as a congressional commission or administrative czar, the task force said. It advocated for clarification of companies' duties to prevent scam activity and establishment of "good Samaritan" liability protections for companies acting reasonably.
The task force's strategy rightly recognizes that industry and government need to be partners, said Katia Gonzalez Gutierrez, head of corporate public policy at communications services company Proximus Global. But fraud prevention "cannot come at the expense of privacy." Liability protections "are a strong step forward, enabling industry to act pre-emptively rather than just reactively," she said in an emailed statement. There also needs to be more cross-border sharing with groups such as the Global Informal Regulatory Antifraud Forum, she added.
NCLC's brief said FCC rules that require VoIP service providers to collect information about their calling customers "have clearly not been sufficient" to prevent them from knowingly transmitting scam calls. The group advocated for requiring VoIP providers to obtain a bond before they can transmit VoIP calls into U.S. phone networks, with providers potentially losing that bond if they let unknown entities place calls through their network. VoIP providers should have to investigate and block call traffic showing "suspicious characteristics," such as a high percentage of short-duration calls, NCLC said.
The group also called for expanded enforcement of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act and the FTC's Telemarketing Sales Rule. For example, the existing cause of action for violation of the TCPA’s do-not-call regulations could be extended to let people sue after receiving one illegal call. NCLC urged stronger state telemarketing and robocall statutes as well.