[the-facts-machine] Re: Robo-calls, at record high, could get a lot worse

From: "Marcia Moses" <mgmoses@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <the-facts-machine@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 13 Jul 2018 19:39:06 -0400

Recently I've received calls in foreign languages on my cell.

From: the-facts-machine-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<the-facts-machine-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Steve
Sent: Friday, July 13, 2018 6:30 PM
To: the-facts-machine@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [the-facts-machine] Robo-calls, at record high, could get a lot
worse

I think people should start a petition to boycott merchants that are
lobbying to loosen restrictions on these robocalls.

Steve

Robo-calls, at record high, could get a lot worse . Tony Romm.

Businesses want the Trump administration to make mass dialing easier

Robo-calls ravaged Americans' smartphones in record numbers last month. But
some of the nation's top businesses - from credit card companies and student
lenders to retailers and car dealers - are still urging the Trump
administration to make it easier for them to dial and text mobile devices en
masse.

For many smartphone owners,
there's rarely a day that they don't receive an unanticipated call from an
unrecognized number, some sporting an area code that's suspiciously similar
to their own. In June, robo-calls rang an estimated 4 billion times,
according to data published Thursday by YouMail, a call-blocking app. A
quarter of
the calls sought to steal financial information or ensnare people in other
serious scams. But major U.S. corporations such as Capital One, Navient and
Sirius XM tap that same auto-dialing technology to tout their products or
nudge consumers to pay their late bills. Their lobbying blitz to ward off
tough,
new rules has enraged public-interest advocates, who say the floodgates soon
could be open for businesses to pester consumers with calls and texts that
they don't want - while leaving people with fewer options to stop the
onslaught. "We are at serious risk of seeing the existing robo-call problem,
which
is already serious, get far, far worse," said Margot Saunders, a senior
attorney at the National Consumer Law Center. "If the industry is permitted
to
send unlimited texts and make unlimited [robo-calls], without the ability of
the consumer to say stop, who knows what horrible things will happen? The
new data from YouMail marks the highest level of robo-calls the company has
ever calculated, and the fourth time it's broken a record in as many months.
About three-quarters of those calls were telemarketing calls, alerts from
companies from like pharmacies with which consumers have a relationship and
payment
reminders from numbers associated with Capital One, Comcast, Wells Fargo and
AT&T, the data show. The increases are partly because consumers are
answering
their phones less frequently so callers are adopting more aggressive
tactics, said Alex Quilici, the chief executive of YouMail. The task of
regulating
these robo-calls rests in the hands of the Federal Communications
Commission, which is studying the matter in response to a recent court
decision that
struck down the agency's last set of protections. The FCC declined to
comment. But businesses led by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have warned
potentially
onerous new federal rules on who they can contact, and how, would prevent
companies from providing useful information to consumers while opening the
door
to a raft of new lawsuits. "What we have heard . . . is that it has chilled
ways of trying to communicate with consumers, whether you're an insurance
company
trying to tell a customer [their] homeowner policy is expiring, or you're
CVS saying your prescription is ready," said Harold Kim, a senior vice
president
at the U.S. Chamber's Institute for Legal Reform. What actually counts as a
robo-call - and how the federal government plans to regulate it - is the
subject
of political and legal disputes. Under a 1991 law passed before the arrival
of iPhones and Androids, the FCC imposed tough restrictions on any
technology
that randomly generated and dialed phone numbers. Those who use autodialers
had to obtain a customer's explicit permission to contact them, too. In
2015,
the FCC adopted rules that covered more technologies and opened the door for
consumers to bring more lawsuits against entities that ignored their demands
to stop calling. In response, a trade association of debt collectors sued
the telecom agency, claiming its rules were too broad, and a federal court
in
March agreed. The powerful U.S. Chamber's Institute for Legal Reform urged
the FCC in May to define what qualifies as a robo-call so that virtually any
intervention from a human - and the use of call lists to contact consumers
systematically - wouldn't qualify under the law. Because those calls may not
technically be considered "robo-calls," businesses may not have to obtain
consent in some cases to contact a consumer in the first place, opponents
contend.
Maureen Mahoney, a policy analyst at Consumers Union who has testified to
Congress about robo-calls, described such efforts as attempts "to chip away
at
the protections that consumers currently have. "What's particularly
concerning is that consumers wouldn't have the legal right to demand calls
[under the
law] to stop," she said. Student lenders such as Navient, backed by
well-heeled Washington trade associations, have lobbied just as
aggressively, telling
the FCC that robo-call restrictions stand in the way of their "ability to
help at-risk and disadvantaged student loan borrowers. Yet Navient has been
a
frequent targets of complaints - and lawsuits - for harassing consumers with
debt-collection robo-calls. Last month, even as Navient asked the FCC to
overhaul
its rules and reduce robo-call lawsuits, it agreed to pay $2.5 million to
settle a class-action case brought by a Virginia woman who argued the
company
repeatedly contacted her about a debt her brother owed. Nikki Lavoie, a
spokeswoman for Navient, said the company doesn't "agree with the
allegations.
She argued the case itself offered "another example of how the law needs to
be reformed. Capital One and Sirius XM did not immediately respond to
requests
for comment. As the FCC figures out how to rethink the robo-call rules, the
agency's chairman, Ajit Pai, has focused his efforts on combating fraud and
abuse. In May, the FCC imposed a record $120 million fine on a Florida man
responsible for millions of unwanted, automatically dialed calls. Pai has
called
such calls a "scourge. The FCC, along with its sister agency, the Federal
Trade Commission, even has tried to nudge the telecom industry to create new
technologies that might block robo-calls behind the scenes. And companies
like YouMail have introduced their own call-locking services.

References:
- [the-facts-machine] Robo-calls, at record high, could get a lot worse
  - From: Steve

[the-facts-machine] Re: Robo-calls, at record high, could get a lot worse

Other related posts: