On Friday, November 15, 2019, it was announced that an agreement had been reached on legislation to fight back against the growing number of robocalls in the US. Six legislators have been working around the clock to try and move the proposed bills through the legislative process. Friday’s announcement was a considerable step in the right direction, with many believing that this new act can be signed into law by the President in the upcoming months.
The Pallone-Thune TRACED Act
The new legislation is called the Pallone-Thune TRACED Act, and it actually combines two different acts that previously passed through the House and the Senate. The Stopping Bad Robocalls Act passed through the House on July 24, 2019, while the TRACED Act passed through the Senate on May 23, 2019.
All six legislative leaders worked together to come to some sort of agreement that brought both of these acts together, forming the legislation we see today. The Pallone-Thune TRACED Act is designed to greatly reduce the number of robocalls seen throughout the country.
A robocall is an anonymous call from some type of telephone software. Your phone rings, and you pick it up, expecting to hear from a human. Instead, there’s a pre-recorded voice that usually tries to sell you something. It’s a waste of your time, and these calls are growing in their frequency. Many people will have multiple robocalls a day, which significantly disrupts their lives.
The legislative agreement will prevent this from happening by making phone carriers verify any calls on their network. This can block more of these calls, and the act also provides the FCC and law enforcement with the power to go after any telephone scammers.
How Will It Work?
The principle behind this act is that callers will be verified before they reach their intended targets. The telecommunications industry uses something called STIR/SHAKEN as a way of identifying who is calling who. In essence, the originating call provider must give information to an outbound call that proves they are a legitimate person.
From here, their information is digitally signed to stop anyone from replicating or tampering with it. The end provider verifies the info and can show the called party that someone legitimate is calling them.
In effect, it doesn’t technically stop robocalls. But, it does prevent a tactic called ID spoofing. Many scammers use fake caller ID’s to trick unsuspecting people into picking up their phones. This software will make it much harder for ID spoofing to work, which will reduce the number of robocalls made via this tactic.
Carolina Digital Phone Partners With TransNexus
At Carolina Digital Phone, we’re proud to partner with TransNexus to help stop all the unnecessary robocalls that cause business owners to lose valuable time on the phone. TransNexus offers STIR/SHAKEN solutions that we will use to improve caller verification and cut down on ID spoofing robocalls.
Not only that, but they also have robocall prevention solutions that we can utilize to further prevent the number of robocalls your business receives. The best part is, all of this happens without you needing to do anything. You carry on as normal, and we handle these mischievous calls.
This new robocall prevention legislation is a massive step in the right direction. Hopefully, it gets finalized and signed very soon, putting an end to this epidemic.
