Attorney General Becerra Calls on USTelecom to Expand Consumer Protections Against Robocalls

SACRAMENTO – California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, as part of a coalition of 52 attorneys general, sent a letter to the telecommunications industry trade group, USTelecom, urging them to continue to expand their enforcement efforts against illegal robocalls. The letter builds on the August 2019 Anti-Robocall Principles, which were agreed upon and supported by all 50 states and 12 prominent telecom companies. These principles declared the need for telecom companies to cooperate with law enforcement to perform “tracebacks,” which track the path of a robocall through the multiple upstream carriers to discover the source of the call.

“Consumers continue to be intruded upon and defrauded by illegal and unwanted robocalls,” said Attorney General Becerra. “These illegal calls often lead to identity theft and financial loss for those on the other end of the line. We are reminding USTelecom of the principles they agreed to uphold to combat unwanted, illegal robocalls and ask that they step up their efforts to help us protect consumers.”

Illegal and unwanted robocalls harm consumers and interrupt our daily lives. Consumer fraud often originates with a robocall. Robocalls and telemarketing calls are currently the number one source of consumer complaints to both the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). According to the FTC, consumers reported a total loss of $429 million as a result of these phone-based frauds in 2018.

In the letter, the coalition requests USTelecom to continue expanding its capabilities for robocall tracebacks by:

• Utilizing a wider variety of call data sources to both diversify and aggregate as much pertinent robocall data as possible;

• Analyzing such data to identify past, current, and future illegal robocall campaigns and trends, and to better understand the interconnected ecosystem of businesses facilitating illegal robocallers;

• Automating traceback investigations and increasing the total volume of such investigations;

• Alerting relevant law enforcement agencies, including state attorneys general, of suspected illegal robocall campaigns with sufficient information to trigger investigations;

• Enabling law enforcement agencies to upload and receive responses to subpoenas and civil investigative demands electronically;

• Providing swift and comprehensive compliance with such subpoenas and civil investigative demands electronically; and

• Identifying noncooperative VSPs, such as: VSPs that do not participate in the traceback process; VSPs that repeatedly originate or accept illegal robocalls; VSPs that are regularly the domestic point of entry for illegal robocalls originating outside the U.S.; and VSPs that are repeatedly incapable of providing sufficient records.

In filing the letter, Attorney General Becerra joins the attorneys general of Michigan, Ohio, Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Wyoming, the District of Columbia, American Samoa, and Puerto Rico.

A copy of the letter can be found here.