Why do you still get unwanted calls from telemarketers?
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Listener Mark Hemm asks:
How are telemarketers able to use unassigned telephone numbers to make outgoing calls and how are telephone companies powerless to stop them?
U.S. consumers receive 1.4 billion telemarketing calls a month, according to YouMail, a robocall blocking service. The telemarketing and call center business was valued at a whopping $27 billion last year.
Telemarketers and scammers sometimes use a technique called spoofing to make their number appear like a local caller or trusted organization, often using invalid or unassigned numbers. Consumers will often receive these unwanted calls in the form of a pre-recorded message known as a robocall.
“Bad guys can make their number look like pretty much anything they want it to look like,” said Teresa Murray, the consumer watchdog director of the U.S. Public Interest Research Group.
Call-blocking technology used to run afoul of free speech, Murray said. But that changed about 10 years ago, when the government introduced stricter rules and mandated call-blocking tech.
“Regulators started working with the phone companies and saying, ‘We can’t keep playing Whac-a-Mole. We can’t keep on trying to squash every single bad guy who’s out there. So let’s stop it at the source,” Murray said.
Experts told us many phone companies have yet to roll out call-blocking technology, while it’s tough to crack down on telemarketers and scammers since the Federal Communications Commission doesn’t have enough manpower to enforce these rules.
Scammers often change their numbers and some set up shell corporations, which makes it difficult to collect any fees imposed by the Federal Communications Commission, said telecommunications attorney Carl Northrop.
When the FCC issues fines, the Justice Department has to go to court, file a case and collect that fine. If it turns out the scammer set up a shell company with no assets, then it’s not worth the Justice Department’s time to pursue it, Northrop explained.
“Right now, a lot of the enforcement is trying to go after not the robocallers themselves, but the telephone companies that don’t have the procedures in place in order to detect the illegal activity,” Northrop said.
An anti-robocall bill went into effect in 2021, requiring phone companies to install technology that gives calls a “digital signature” in order to ensure they’re legitimate and not spoofed.
This applies to any voice service providers, Murray said, be it a wireless carrier, satellite service, internet calling startup or operator of old-fashioned copper lines. There are more than 9,000 voice service providers in the country, Murray said.
Many providers don’t originate or receive calls, they’re essentially middlemen or “gateways,” Murray explained. Calling someone is similar to a relay, where phone companies are handing off the baton – or your call – to other companies along the way before the call reaches the finish line, Murray said.
Marketplace reached out to major mobile carriers to ask what they’re doing to stop unwanted calls.
AT&T and T-Mobile said they use machine learning to detect and block fraudulent calls, and offer apps that allow customers to block calls or send them straight to voicemail.
Both companies received Bs in a new report from the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, which graded consumer protection from robocalls, but half of the largest companies received Ds or Fs for not responding to questions or failing to install call-blocking technology.
“It just hasn’t been a high enough priority for them,” Murray said.
The FCC bans spoofing with ill intent, but the agency only has so many resources to handle complaints, said Margot Saunders, senior attorney with the National Consumer Law Center.
Telemarketers will claim they got consent to make their calls, Saunders said. But telemarketers often ask consumers to consent to calls from partner companies without disclosing that these partners can number in the hundreds or even thousands.
A new FCC rule passed last year would have required each company to ask for consent to call, Saunders said, but the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals vacated that regulation in late January.
“This issue doesn’t just affect consumers. It affects small businesses,” Saunders said.
The FCC announced in December it would take action against more than 2,400 companies after pressure from consumer advocates and state attorneys general, Murray said. The FCC had threatened very few companies for non-compliance up until that point, Murray noted.
While we have a new presidential administration, Murray said she’s not particularly concerned about any potential setbacks, since scams are “a bipartisan issue.”
Scam calls lead to huge economic losses for Americans. A 2024 report from the scam-blocking app Truecaller found that more than 56 million Americans lost money through scam calls over the past year, leading to a loss of $25.4 billion. A personal finance writer for The Cut lost $50,000 alone.
If you’re looking to better protect yourself from scammy calls, Murray recommends shopping around and finding a new phone company in your area that offers better protections.
You can find out what additional services your phone company offers and also check out third-party services, like Nomorobo, Murray said. Then there’s the national Do Not Call Registry, a list of numbers that telemarketers are prohibited from calling. Registration is free.
“There have been just so many people in this country whose lives have been devastated, and we’ve been very frustrated,” Murray said.
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