Attorney General Becerra, Telecom Industry To Take Action Against Robocalls
SACRAMENTO (CBS13) — California Attorney General Xavier Becerra announced today an agreement with 12 telecommunications providers to take actions against robocalls, according to the Department of Justice.
The DOJ said that all 50 states and the District of Columbia have come to an agreement with the following telecommunications companies: AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, T-Mobile, Comcast, U.S. Cellular, Bandwidth, CenturyLink, Charter, Consolidated, Frontier, and Windstream. All parties came to an agreement on a set of principles intended to limit and prevent robocalls.
The providers have agreed to the following set of principles to incorporate into their business practices:
- Offer free call blocking and labeling to stop robocalls before they reach consumers;
- Implement STIR/SHAKEN to ensure that numbers are not illegally spoofed and to prevent scammers from providing a number they are not authorized to use;
- Analyze and monitor network traffic to identify and monitor patterns consistent with robocalls;
- Investigate suspicious calls and calling patterns and seek to identify the party and take appropriate action;
- Confirm the identity of commercial customers by collecting information such as location, contact persons, state or country of incorporation, federal tax ID, and nature of the customer's business;
- Require traceback cooperation in call interconnection contracts by seeking language requiring voice service providers to identify the upstream carrier from which a suspected illegal robocall entered its network or to where the call originated in its network;
- Cooperate in traceback investigations by dedicating resources to respond to requests from law enforcement and the US Telecom's Industry Traceback Group, so that scammers can be identified and prosecuted; and
- Communicate with state attorneys general about scams and trends in illegal robocalling.
