Feds give phone companies new tools to fight robocalls
NEW YORK -- Federal regulators voted Thursday to give phone companies the right to block unwanted calls without getting customers' permission first.
"We get things working really well. We're flagging all these calls as scams. And then the scammers find a new way," said Grant Castle, vice president of engineering at T-Mobile."We have to adjust. It is a constant back-and-forth." The robocall problem has exploded because cheap software makes it easy to make mass calls. Scammers don't care if you've added your number to the government's Do Not Call list.
Phone companies are implementing a system to identify faked numbers and have rolled out call-blocking apps. But they haven't done much else, worried about their own legal liability for accidentally blocking calls that should go through. Another angle of attack is to get rid of"spoofed" numbers. That's when a scammer fakes the number on your phone to look like it's coming from the same area code you have, in an effort to get you to pick up.
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