Robocalls have ruined the phone. My land line receives as many as a dozen robocalls a day. My poorboy solution is to let the machine answer it, if the caller cares enough to leave a message. Too often, though, the caller is itself a recording, which is too stupid to simply hang up.
Anyway, this is simply a rant. And there doesn't seem to be any workable solution without serious work by the phone companies and lawmakers. In that regard, the FCC issued a notice in February titled Stop Unwanted Robocalls and Texts. To wit:
Unwanted calls – including illegal and spoofed robocalls - are the FCC's top consumer complaint and our top consumer protection priority. In addition, complaints are on the rise from consumers whose numbers are being spoofed or whose calls are being mistakenly blocked or labeled as a possible scam call by a robocall blocking app or service. The FCC is committed to doing what we can to protect you from these unwelcome situations and is cracking down on illegal calls in a variety of ways:
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Issuing hundreds of millions of dollars in enforcement actions against illegal robocallers.
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Allowing phone companies to block certain types of calls that are likely to be unlawful before they even reach consumers.
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Empowering consumers to use call blocking or labeling services for calls to their telephone number.
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Working to develop ways that phone companies can authenticate caller ID to reduce illegal spoofing.
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Making our complaint data available to enable better call blocking and labeling solutions.
Download the FCC Report on Robocalls (PDF; 2/14/19)
You can file a complaint with the FCC if you believe you have received an illegal call or text.
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3:29 PM 5/8/2019
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