Last week, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approved new rules designed to combat robocalls and robotexts. “The new rules close a loophole through which unscrupulous robocallers and robotexters inundate consumers with unwanted and illegal robocalls and robotexts,” the FCC said.
“The new rules make it unequivocally clear that comparison shopping websites and lead generators must obtain consumer consent to receive robocalls and robotexts one seller at a time—rather than have a single consent apply to multiple telemarketers at once.”
Under the Biden Administration, the FCC has significantly ramped up its efforts to protect consumers from phone and text scams, including trying to close loopholes in the Do-Not-Call registry. In August, the FCC issued a record fine of $299,997,000 against a robocall operation that specialized in auto warranty scam calls, the FCC announced, calling it “the largest illegal robocall operation the agency has ever investigated.”
And on November 15, 2023, the FCC adopted a Notice of Inquiry (NOI) that seeks comment to better understand the impact of emerging artificial intelligence (AI) technologies as part of the FCC’s efforts to protect consumers from unwanted and illegal telephone calls and text messages.
This latest robocall order also “allow[s] the FCC to ‘red flag’ certain numbers, requiring mobile carriers to block texts from those numbers,” and “codif[ies] that Do-Not-Call list protections apply to text messaging, making it illegal for marketing texts to be sent to numbers on the registry,” the FCC said.
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