Those annoying, prerecorded messages from politicians and telemarketers who use computers to dial thousands of numbers at a time are not going away any time soon.According to a report by First Orion, a provider of phone call and data transparency solutions, mobile scam calls have increased to 29.2% in 2018, from 3.7% of the total calls in 2017. The report suggests that scam calls will reach 44.7% by early 2019. In April 2018, First Orion testified before Congress at the “Do Not Call: Combating Robocalls and Caller ID Spoofing” hearing in Washington, D.C.
You might already be on the federal Do Not Call list, but some robo-callers have the technology and the chutzpah to ignore it and call you anyway. The Telecommunications Consumer Protection Act, or TCPA, had become outdated, as it was written in 1991, long before mainstream internet and mobile phone usage. And all robocalling isn’t bad – you receive such calls to remind you to pick up prescriptions, or receive a fraud alert from your bank. In 2017, the Federal Communications Commission adopted new rules to protect consumers from unwanted robocalls, allowing phone companies to proactively block fraudulent calls.
For more information on this topic, and suggestions on how to deter or avoid nuisance calls, read the full story on our sister site, Living on the Cheap.
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