Starting as we speak, small telephone carriers should implement a particular caller ID authentication software that may assist determine robocallers, the Federal Communication Commission introduced. Known as STIR/SHAKEN, main carriers comparable to AT&T and Verizon — resulting from an FCC rule adopted in 2020 — have had the identical software in place since final yr. The company initially gave small carriers a extra beneficiant deadline of June 2023 to undertake STIR/SHAKEN, however opted to fast-track adoption as a result of it found “a subset of those small voice service suppliers have been originating an rising amount of unlawful robocalls.”
But as a brand new report from the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) notes, merely flagging suspected robocalls shouldn’t be sufficient to deal with the robocall trade. “The drawback is that making use of the STIR/SHAKEN methodology requires solely that originating suppliers apply a certification indicating how assured they’re that the caller ID displayed within the calls is appropriate,” the report states. Presumably, this implies calls can nonetheless be routed by means of gateway carriers from overseas the place the FCC’s guidelines do not apply. But as EPIC additionally mentions, implementing STIR/SHAKEN might assist determine spam callers, however there are no actual metrics in place by which to measure how efficient carriers are at stopping the calls. “The FCC’s pending regulatory efforts would proceed to require solely that suppliers have procedures in place to mitigate unlawful robocalls,” the report factors out, “with no significant and enforceable requirement that these procedures truly be efficient.”