YouMail calls on newly appointed FCC Chairman Ajit Pai to take a strong stand on tackling what it calls a robocall epidemic.
Editor’s Note: The RCR Wireless News Reality Check section is where C-level executives and advisory firms from across the mobile industry share unique insights and experiences.
Mobile and wireless companies are paying close attention to the early actions of newly installed Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai.
Industry watchers have raised concerns about Pai preserving net neutrality policies, but another key consumer issue involves the nation’s dreaded robocalling epidemic. Chairman Pai recently announced the opening of a docket to address solutions for robocall issues, which will also be discussed at the FCC open meeting on March 23.
In the past year, our company launched the YouMail Robocall Index to track the vast scope of this problem. With an automated virtual receptionist that replaces our user’s mobile voicemail, YouMail has answered billions of calls for our users, which allows us to use algorithms to detect any automatically dialed calls and then aggregate that call data into the Robocall Index. We estimate that Americans received 29 billion robocalls in 2016, far exceeding our wildest guesses about the extent of this concern.
The good news is the FCC has launched a Robocall Strike Force in partnership with some of the largest telecom carriers and tech companies, including AT&T, Apple and Google. The Strike Force cited data from the YouMail Robocall Index in its “Final Report” from Oct. 26.
The bad news is that fixing this scourge of robocalls will be complicated because there’s no single answer that will make the problem go away instantly.
One of the biggest issues with robocalls is that it’s very easy for the bad guys to spoof a number. Many automated dialing systems just let you fill in the number you want to appear in the caller ID and the name you want along with it. The bad guys often use this spoofing system to pretend to be the IRS. Or they pretend to be calling from a local number in your area code so you’re more likely to pick it up.
Addressing that behavior requires all the carriers to get together and implement caller ID verification standards that aren’t finalized yet. Making such a change may also require adding expensive new hardware to their legacy networks, which would have to be rolled out at enormous scale, affecting hundreds of millions of people at once. That kind of concerted industrywide effort will clearly take some time. And on top of that, even if they can authenticate the number, it’s going to be difficult to validate the name, allowing the bad guys to still look like the IRS or Microsoft or whoever they want to be.
There are other ideas too, like a “do-not-originate” list of numbers that should never be making an outbound call, such as major inbound customer service numbers. Some initial testing with a set of IRS numbers showed this can cut those calls dramatically. That concern might be easier to address, but even those solutions will take some time because carriers operate at massive scale, so they need to get things right before deploying such a list.
Even with carriers moving as fast as they can, they can’t really tackle this problem overnight. Some of the simpler things that many carriers or handset providers have rolled out – like the ability for users to block one number at a time – are all but useless since the robocallers call from such a wide variety of different numbers.
Given this situation, what should we be doing in the meantime? And what can the carriers do?
The real way to stop robocalls is to make them less lucrative. Robocallers make huge volumes of calls because these calls are so cheap. It doesn’t take that many people to fall for a scam and send in hundreds or even thousands of dollars for this to be a profitable business. And if robocallers do it from offshore, their legal risk is very low. While the Federal Trade Commission collected nearly $80 million in fines over the past few years, that only works out to a fraction of a penny cost across all the robocalls made.
Imagine if no one ever answered the phone – the robocallers would never succeed in their scams and they would soon go out of business. Of course, it’s not practical to set every phone permanently on silent mode, so here are three ways carriers can help in the near-term.
Helping change consumer behavior
People need to be made aware that they simply can’t answer the phone from a number they personally don’t recognize – the odds are too high that it’s a problem. Conversely, people and companies need to get used to leaving voice messages instead of just hanging up – as that helps people decide whether they should call back.
Driving awareness of existing solutions
While there’s no silver bullet, there are lots of applications and services available to help address different pieces of the problem. For example, for both Android and iPhone users, there are literally dozens of caller ID and call blocking apps, all of which try to identify callers and give an indication if they’re safe or problematic and prevent at least some of the bad guys from even ringing the phone.
Providing platform support
Many apps and services could work even better with some carrier support. For example, NoMoRobo needs simultaneous ringing to be available and YouMail needs conditional call forwarding. Many apps would also benefit from being able to add numbers to carrier block lists when they support it.
The takeaway for consumers is that carriers are not to blame for the robocalling epidemic, but they must become the crucial players to formulate a workable solution. Truly solving this problem will take a united front involving carriers, tech companies, policymakers and of course FCC regulators.
We applaud the FCC for organizing the Robocall Strike Force. While some parts of the solution are complex and will require time to implement, there are other steps which can be taken now to make things better with relatively little effort.
