Is there finally more help in the fight against robocalls?

Still, there's hope that new efforts from the

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Federal Communications Commission and the industry should help you dodge many robocalls, even if they won't go away completely. In a scheduled vote Thursday with big implications, the FCC is clarifying that phone companies can block many unwanted calls without asking customers first.

Phone scams have cost victims millions of dollars. And they disrupt institutions, not just your dinner. A hospital in Florida, the Moffitt Cancer Center, received 6,600 calls over 90 days faked to look as though they were coming from inside the hospital, diverting 65 hours of staff time from patient care.

The aggravation isn't limited to scammers pretending to be from the IRS or Social Security. Call-blocker YouMail estimates that about a third of robocalls come from debt collectors and companies pitching cruises or insurance.

The robocall problem has exploded because cheap software makes it easy to make mass calls. Scammers don't care if you've added your number to the government's Do Not Call list.

Yet enforcement against illegal callers is negligible. Federal agencies have fined scammers hundreds of millions of dollars, but it's been difficult to collect. Many of the callers are overseas. It's hard to throw the fraudsters in jail.

As a result, robocalls from scammers and legitimate companies have risen to 5 billion per month in the U.S., according to YouMail. That works out to 14 calls per person.

It's nearly double the 2.7 billion robocalls in November 2017, when the government gave wireless companies such as Verizon and T-Mobile permission to block some problem calls that are certainly scams, like if they started with a 911 area code.

https://phys.org/news/2019-06-robocalls.html