If you have a phone, chances are you're one
of the many Americans who's been the target of a
scam. As a country, we get more than
2 billion scam and unwanted calls every single month,
and that's just not acceptable. Teresa Murray is the
consumer watchdog director with the Public Interest Research Group.
She points out a federal law went into effect in
2021 to require phone companies to install technology to fight
these scams, but less than half of Implemented the
technology that they're supposed to be using by law to
fight robocalls and to keep them from ringing on my
phone and your phone and everybody else's phone. According
to Murray, scam calls have only dropped by 17%
since the federal law went into effect, and she
argues the Federal Communications Commission isn't doing enough to enforce
the law, and phone companies aren't doing enough to
implement it. A lot of them are doing it
, but a lot of them are not. And
so we need to demand more. We need to
expect more. The FCC pushed back on those claims
, telling me they've made tremendous progress in ensuring compliance
with the federal anti-scam call law. The FCC declined
our interview request, but in a statement said it
is incorrect to state that most providers are not complying
. In narrow exceptions where implementation is not possible,
all providers are nevertheless still required to take action to
prevent illegal robocalls on their networks and must file robocall
mitigation plans with the FCC, but says this is
an issue that deserves more attention because these scam calls
and texts are more than just annoying. For some
people, they become dangerous and they get tricked into
providing information that ends up leading to financial losses.
So sometimes it's a few$100 sometimes it's$1000 sometimes
in many, many cases, it's unfortunately people's life
savings. Murray also adds spreading awareness about scams is
key to preventing them. In Washington, I'm Hannah 00:01:47.810 --> Grant.