The United States House Has Approved a New Anti-Robocall Bill

Today the United States House voted 417-3 to approve an anti-robocall bill that would help change rules to make it easier to crack down on unwanted calls. This new bill helps address problems with robocalls by strengthening penalties for intentional robocalling in violation of the prior consent requirement.  The bill also requires telephone service providers to implement effective mechanisms for determining whether the number appearing on a call is authentic. If it is not an authentic call you will no be alerted.

The bill also requires providers to enable the option to block robocalls that cannot be authenticated.

“The House vote is a major victory in the long fight to curb abusive robocalls,” said Maureen Mahoney, Policy Analyst for Consumer Reports. “This is another important step toward a national law to help us take our phones back from the robocallers.  People are sick and tired of being harassed by robocalls, day and night. They disrupt our lives, and they can be scams by people who want to steal your money and exploit your personal information,” Mahoney said.

“With all the important new protections this bill gives consumers from unwanted and abusive robocalling, the final bill is also a missed opportunity to give them other needed protections,” Mahoney said. “We will continue to work with Congress and the FCC to get consumers all the protections they need.  Still, we are very glad Congress is taking these steps, and we look forward to helping see that these new protections are fully implemented.”

Hopefully, this will help crack down on new scams targeting cord cutters by pretending to be Netflix or Roku on the phone.

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