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United States

48 States Sue Phone Company That Allegedly Catered To Needs of Robocallers 47

Posted by msmash from the no-mercy dept.
Nearly every US state yesterday sued a telecom company accused of routing billions of illegal robocalls to millions of US residents on the Do Not Call Registry. From a report: Avid Telecom, an Arizona-based company formed in 2000, "chose profit over running a business that conforms to state and federal law," according to a lawsuit led by Arizona AG Kris Mayes and joined by the attorneys general of 47 other states and the District of Columbia. The case involves every US state except Alaska and South Dakota. The lawsuit was filed in US District Court for the District of Arizona against Avid Telecom, CEO Michael Lansky, and VP of Operations and Sales Stacey Reeves. The lawsuit arises from work done by the Anti-Robocall Multistate Litigation Task Force of 51 attorneys general.

"In the more than 7.5 billion calls to telephone numbers on the National Do Not Call Registry, Avid Telecom used spoofed or invalid caller ID numbers, including more than 8.4 million calls that appeared to be coming from government and law enforcement agencies, as well as private companies," a press release from the Arizona AG's office said. The lawsuit seeks a jury trial, a permanent injunction to prevent additional illegal robocalls, and financial penalties including "restitution or other compensation on behalf of residents" for illegal calls. The lawsuit cites the federal Telemarketing and Consumer Fraud and Abuse Prevention Act, the Telemarketing Sales Rule, the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, and certain state laws regarding unfair and deceptive trade practices.
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48 States Sue Phone Company That Allegedly Catered To Needs of Robocallers More

48 States Sue Phone Company That Allegedly Catered To Needs of Robocallers

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  • wtf (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Why not Alaska or South Dakota?

  • ... remember when I said that the only thing it will be used for is conveniently centralizing all the phone numbers for the spammers to call?

    • Re:Remember when they made that do-not-call list? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by NoMoreDupes ( 8410441 ) on Wednesday May 24, 2023 @04:36PM (#63548959)

      ... remember when I said that the only thing it will be used for is conveniently centralizing all the phone numbers for the spammers to call?

      It's also useful for suing the shit out of the companies that don't abide by it - having your number on that list also means you can get a whole lot more money when they're found guilty for violating it.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Narcocide ( 102829 )

        It's taken them 23 years to take action on one sole violator, guilty of literally billions of fraudulent calls. You're delusional if you think this is an example of "the system working."

    • Re:Remember when they made that do-not-call list? (Score:5, Funny)

      by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Wednesday May 24, 2023 @04:39PM (#63548967)

      ... remember when I said that the only thing it will be used for is conveniently centralizing all the phone numbers for the spammers to call?

      Yes, because phone numbers come from an un-quantifiable pool of numbers that couldn't be dialed w/o that list, even randomly. /s

      • The volume of spam, scam, and phishing calls I get belies the hypothesis that they're going by random selection.

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Archangel Michael ( 180766 )

          They are dialing sequences 555-1234 555-1235 etc.

          What would fix some of this is something like what we have for email, SPF, DKIM, DMARC authentication except for CallerIDs, instead of email.

          Doesn't solve everything, but it helps.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by HiThere ( 15173 )

            I'm rather sure it isn't that simple. (I mean, yes, some of them are doing that, but there's got to be some other selection that others are doing.) OTOH, it can't be any personalize selection, because they keep trying scams on me where I wouldn't want what they're offering even for free.

        • The volume of spam, scam, and phishing calls I get belies the hypothesis that they're going by random selection.

          I get literally zero of those on my home landline and almost none on my cell, which are almost all hangups (but noted as SPAM by Google). If an undesirable caller is dumb enough to leave a voicemail, I report the call to the National Do Not Call Registry [donotcall.gov] -- whether the number shown on the Caller ID is the actual number is another story, but if the voicemail mentions a different number, I include that in the comment and make an additional report for that number, with a comment about the first number.

          Both

          • 2008. My home address is also registered with the Direct Marketing Association DMA Choice [dmachoice.org], though I did that *way* back via the USPS when it was free and permanent

            Its still free you just have to tell them you’re dead.

          • almost none on my cell, which are almost all hangups (but noted as SPAM by Google).

            The hangups are the first round to see if the phone number is active. The calls that are answered get the second round of calls that actually have people on them.

    • and you're wrong now. The number of sales calls I get dropped like a rock. As for the scammers, my Cell phone company tells me about them via caller Id 99% of the time. They're annoying (especially since you can't leave your ringer on) but hardly a major problem for anyone but the poor sods who they occasionally scam.

    • ... remember when I said that the only thing it will be used for is conveniently centralizing all the phone numbers for the spammers to call?

      No, I don't remember that. You got the URL to your post where you said that?

  • This will succeed. Our society has become:

    1) extremely hostile to any legal issue that crosses state lines. Unless it has to do with abortion. If thats the case, a judge in rural texas can overrule 20 years of medical knowledge and order a nationwide change in medicine availability.

    2) exceptionally supportive of free speech. Unless it has to do with black slavery in the US, which has been outlawed as a topic in some grade schools, because white people are apparently too brittle to hear about it.

    I
    • Only two of the states are not included so presumably Arizona is also one of those states suing, which is where these scum are doing business.

      The act of phone calling is not free speech. The call itself is by law supposed to not be calling those on the do not call registry for unsolicited purposes - and using faked caller ID is fraud. Once you legally place a call you can then say whatever you want but you are also not free from defamation or fraud laws.

    • Re:Not a chance (Score:4, Funny)

      by Ogive17 ( 691899 ) on Wednesday May 24, 2023 @05:01PM (#63549015)
      There are only a few things that can unite people around the world.

      Eliminating robo calls is one of them.
      • Nobody has managed it in the past 20 years, and our court system is completely tied in knots. All it would take is a short luxury cruise for Clarence Thomas and a nice fat check for Tucker Carlson and it’ll be our next culture war item.

  • ... an Arizona-based company ...

    I would have guessed FL or TX, but it seems the list of trash states keeps getting longer. /bad-thoughts

  • Has it taken so long to take this action? And why have the telcos not been required to shut this stuff down? Any one of them could identify where all these calls are coming from anytime they want to.

    • Re:WHY? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Baron_Yam ( 643147 ) on Wednesday May 24, 2023 @04:56PM (#63549003)

      To connect a call requires two endpoints that can route to each other, but when there are transitions between POTS and VOIP, especially when different companies are involved... they generally trust each other and the caller ID information is not actually authenticated.

      As long as everyone gets paid, they don't care.

    • They needed cryptographic authentication. This was Ajit Pai's biggest push as FCC Commissioner (STIR/SHAKEN).

      95% of the people here hate on him because he's Republican and these things that take a long time take twice as long with politicial haters.

      So irrational haters is why you got an extra three years of robocalls.

      • They needed cryptographic authentication. This was Ajit Pai's biggest push as FCC Commissioner (STIR/SHAKEN).

        95% of the people here hate on him because he's Republican and these things that take a long time take twice as long with politicial haters.

        So irrational haters is why you got an extra three years of robocalls.

        Nobody, or very few, hated Ajit Pai because he was Republican. Most hated him because he was a primary example of the principal that you should not hire industry insiders to play regulator. His entire motive was to increase profits on the companies he should have been cracking down on. It was the hypocrisy that made us hate him, not his political affiliations.

  • Another example of why DC is full of shit. We have a do not call list at the federal level but do they actually research and go after these scammers? No.

    Good for the states and they need to start taking more action like this to actually benefit their residents rather than waiting for a bunch of idiots in DC to do it.

    Repealing the 17th Amendment would go a long way in fixing that.

  • How about... (Score:4)

    by rossdee ( 243626 ) on Wednesday May 24, 2023 @04:45PM (#63548981)

    Banning Political robocalls

    • and I've given money to several candidates, so I know they've got my number, but I've never once gotten a political robo call, or any kind of political call (except maybe a poll call or two). Maybe it depends on where you're at, but you'd think I'd be a prime target. I don't think they're used all that much any more.

    • Agreed, public executions.

  • There is literally a PAC organization enlisting random people to robocall as many people as possible (by abusing the "one button" loophole" as part of a political stunt TODAY. https://antirobocall.com/callz... [antirobocall.com]
  • > The lawsuit seeks a jury trial, a permanent injunction to prevent additional illegal robocalls, and financial penalties including "restitution or other compensation on behalf of residents" for illegal calls. Let's add "a smoking crater where the company offices used to be."
  • If so, post it on Slashdot. I would absolutely call their business number a few times a day, and I bet a lot of other people would as well.

    It would be great if they could be denied access to the phone network by a human DDOS attack. Nothing would be more fitting.

  • And there is nothing you can do about them except hang up and block the fake numbers.

  • I get dozen of scam calls per day. I have to answer the phone. I can't whitelist, blacklist, or ignore calls. Returning legitimate calls is a problem because many people refuse to answer their phone unless it's from someone they know. These scammers have seriously devalued the US phone system. Millions of hours are wasted weekly by these criminals.

    I usually play along to see how the scam goes, but some scammers keep hanging up on me even when I think I'm giving the right answers so they can try to scam

  • As long as they fail to do the things we already know how to do in order to prevent these abuses, like enforcing sane caller ID, then they are ALL complicit.

  • So what they're implying is that there's a telco out there which doesn't cater to robocallers. Huh... Fascinating theory...
  • the entire telephone system should report the number called from NOT allow the source number to be spoofed by the source. fix this one thing at least

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