Sorry, scammers: The FCC says AI robocalls are definitely illegal The US Federal Communications Commission has finally formally declared AI-generated voices in robocalls illegal, and it didn't even need a new law to get the job done. In a unanimously-decided declaratory ruling adopted February 2 but only published today, the FCC said it had the authority to make AI robocalls illegal under …
I've been getting AI-generated voice robocalls for a while, asking me if they can talk to me about my health requirements, I assume that their action is to use AI to transfer my vocal response to text, "Tank U eye am two fun king healthy, mine aim is dick, bud eye am not floppy"
We've been trying to reach you about your car's extended warranty. Since we haven't been able to reach you on your phone, we're contacting you via this message board. Please respond immediately with the best time and number to contact you as your car's safety may be at risk.
Who? What you saying lad? You're calling about who? What's one o them then? Nah I mean a car, what's a car?
(Usually by then they have given up and hung up, likely convinced the person who picked up is very much not of sound mind or is immensely hard of hearing and thus will tie up too much scamming time (it helps that I'm told I sound ancient on the phone - one tradesman said he thought I'd be about 80 odd)
"Who? What you saying lad? You're calling about who? What's one o them then? Nah I mean a car, what's a car?
(Usually by then they have given up and hung up, likely convinced the person who picked up is very much not of sound mind or is immensely hard of hearing and thus will tie up too much scamming time (it helps that I'm told I sound ancient on the phone - one tradesman said he thought I'd be about 80 odd)"
Yeah, I'd be careful about that. A little bit of editing and it's a slam dunk to have a recording of you agreeing to something. One of the first things a scammer might do is ask if you can hear them ok. They get you saying yes and can just move that to just after, "would you like us to come around and install siding on your house tomorrow?"
I'd don't answer calls from numbers I don't know on my personal phone and often block numbers if there's no message and nothing shows online (or it comes back as a known telemarketing number). Sometimes it's easy to sort out the telemarketers as the telco the number is registered to is one I've never heard of or when I look them up, they are well known for catering to telemarketing companies even if the number that called me hasn't been flagged (yet). If you do pick up and figure out it's a telemarketer, hang up right away. If you think you many have said something that puts you in a bad position, make notes. I expect there will lots of calls to my number this year from polling companies wanting to do surveys. Those can be the worst sorts to talk to and the bad guys come out in droves around election times.
The FCC and FTC have used TCPA to go after foreign entities in the past - most notably a junk fax operation running in the UK in the ealy 2000s and the whack-a-mole efforts shutting down fax.com, or more recently the $300million action against the "we're calling about your car's extended warranty" scammers (who moved to Panama with call centres in Hungary to dodge USA prosecution)
The thing about illegal robocalls is that inbound telcos only carry them if they're paid to do so. It's notable that they were swift to take action when the scammers started using forged routing information (lower level than CLI) to avoid paying - under claims of "protecting consumers" (when it was really because the calls were costing them money instead of being a money-earner)
I wish there were a way to, when called by an unwanted robocaller, KEEP THEM FROM HANGING UP. To hold the line hostage for as long as the called wishes, until every one of their lines are so held, preventing them from scamming others and forcing them to beg or bribe us beleagered recipients to release the line for some consideration. I would pay very well for such a service for several months, especially the months leading up to US Medicare Enrollment Period.
"So what about non-AI robocalls?"
Those have been mostly illegal in the US for some time, but the problem with a lot of laws is they can be written very narrowly. When something new comes along, the whole debate has to be hauled out of the archives and argued once again. Calls that are pure fraud have been illegal for nearly as long as there have been telephones.
AI robocalls seem to me to be the most frightening. If somebody had a good read on my sister's voice and spoofed her number, I could get a call asking me to send money that's good enough to fool me. I think at this point I'd ask a question about a pet's name from years ago and how that name came around as a check. Our horses that we raised often had a registered name and a couple of nicknames and since we didn't keep them after they were old enough to not need their mother any more, there wouldn't be much in our online past about them, if anything.
Scammers themselves don't seem to mind being illegal. They're like rats -- knock one lot down, another lot immediately take their place. Even the somewhat legit calles use computers to make the call, they wait for an answer and when there's a human on the line (as against the call being immediately disconnected with a real or virtual "FO") they transfer the line to a desk agent who will run through the script and then transfer any likely mark to the closer.
This is just Government In Action. Clueless, or to be charitable, a generation or two behind the technology.
Whilst jailing the scammers helps, the real way to stop them is to make it unprofitable to operate(*)
Telcos are complicit in the operation - they get paid to terminate calls and hide behind "common carrier" protection as an excuse for not taking action (until they get scammed themselves and find themselves out of pocket - then they happily block calls)
Rather than playing whack-a-mole with scammers who go out of their way to hide from victims, go after the telcos. If it costs them more to carry scam calls than the income that's generated from termination revenue, they WILL put a stop to the activity
(*) Most criminals don't operate for the fun of criminality, they're in it for the money. That's why Portugal's reclassifying drug addiction as a health issue and treating it accordingly has gutted narcogang income in that country to the point that they've pretty much stopped operating there
voice cloning fall within this law's existing prohibitions and that calls that use this technology to simulate a human voice are illegal, unless callers have obtained prior express consent
There are plenty of companies that force people to agree to things they'd rather not. Sometimes you have a choice, but if the contract that everybody proffers for phone service requires you to agree to arbitration and are disallowed from filing a case in a real court, how much choice does one have. What happens if the electric company requires you consent to AI calls or no leccy for you?
The prior consent should be required to be completely optional. For it not to be would require a company to show, in court, why it must be done that way. Obviously, if you want to be on a list for notifications about something, that should be considered reasonable. If the call involves any sort of agreement to make a purchase or modify an existing contract, it might be better if it were disallowed.
"if the contract that everybody proffers for phone service requires you to agree to arbitration and are disallowed from filing a case in a real court, how much choice does one have"
Most countries have laws prohibiting/voiding unfair terms in consumer contracts. I am surprised that the USA allows this....
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