‘You’ve won a free cruise!’: An end to those obnoxious robocalls may be coming
Ring. Ring. Ring.
“Hello?”
“Congratulations! You are the lucky winner of a free cruise! Press ‘1’ to accept your prize!”
We’ve all gotten such calls, with promises of free travel or a new car, if only we follow the automated prompts and provide the caller with our personal information. There are also the more unpleasant variety: a person claiming to be from a credit card company or the Internal Revenue Service, demanding we make outstanding payments immediately.
According to Consumer Reports, successful scam calls cost Americans $350 million in financial losses each year, and Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., wants to stop them.
Schumer introduced a bill Tuesday that would stop robocalls, the obnoxious automated phone calls he said have become “an epidemic.”
“Despite the existing ‘Do Not Call’ registry, the robocall problem has returned in a serious way. It’s an epidemic that we’ve got to stop — whether it’s the landline OR the mobile phone,” Schumer said in a statement. “It’s taking far too long for telecom companies to act, so that’s why I’m introducing the ROBOCOP bill which will finally require all major landline and mobile carriers to work towards making robocall blocking technology available to all consumers.”
Schumer’s Repeated Objectionable Bothering of Consumers on Phones Act (ROBOCOP Act) would require all landline and mobile telephone carriers to such blocking technology for free to eliminate the annoying — and sometimes costly — calls. According to the Federal Trade Commission, there could be as many as 5 million consumer complaints lodged about robocalls in 2016. There were more than 3.5 million complaints in 2015.
Despite the existence of a national “Do Not Call” list, robocalls have spread from traditional landlines to plague cellphone numbers as well. The list was started in 2003, but it has decreased in effectiveness due to the advancements of internet technology.
Robocalls are made by automated dialing machines, often associated with fraudulent companies that hope the call recipient will fall for the scam and fork over their credit card number to get the IRS off their back. Fraudsters are aided in their scheme by employing “caller ID spoofing,” which allows the fake company to display a government agency or bank phone number, making the call seem legitimate.
This story was originally published June 8, 2016 at 7:08 PM with the headline "‘You’ve won a free cruise!’: An end to those obnoxious robocalls may be coming."