FCC, State Action Nets An Amazing 80% Reduction In Auto Warranty Scam Robocalls

We've frequently noted how stupid it is that we've ceded a major communications platform to robocalling scammers and scumbags. We've noted for just as long that many regulatory solutions" to the robocall problem have been dumb and half-hearted. Every six months the FCC will announce some new plan they promise will demolish robocalls, and every single time the result is muted at best.

Until recently, when the Biden FCC began coordinating enforcement action against scam robocalls in cooperation with law enforcement in 43 states. This joint action recently took specific aim at 22 defendants responsible for billions of illegal auto warranty robocalls, ranging from the robocallers themselves, to the dodgy VoIP companies that turn a blind eye to the practices.

After an Ohio lawsuit targeted two men responsible for most of the calls, auto warranty scam robocalls immediately dropped 80 percent in the U.S. according to analysis by YouMail, a robocall blocking and analysis company. In visual form, the improvement is remarkable:

Brian Fung at CNN had an excellent breakdown of the progress made thanks to this new joint action:

The warranty calls from Cox/Jones - the ones the AGs and others went after - are down to near zero," Alex Quilici, YouMail's CEO, told CNN in an email. There are other warranty calls out there - probably in the 500k-1m range - but they are from other folks. So the biggest culprits have been effectively shut down, and now it's on to the smaller fry."

Working more closely with the states, cracking down harder on lazy phone and VoIP providers that turn a blind eye to scammers, and pushing industry to implement new SHAKEN/STIR anti-spoofing tech is clearly paying dividends. But there's still work to be done, given that Americans alone still receive an estimated 5.1 million robocalls every single hour.

One, as we've noted a few times, is that most robocalls aren't coming from scammers":

Groups like the National Consumer Law Center (NCLC) have repeatedly issued studies showing how legitimate" companies and debt collectors use all the same tools and tricks as scammers, often harassing people they know can't pay (or don't want their services) sometimes hundreds of times a day. And they do so with the blessing of federal and state policy and lawmakers, who've been lobbied into apathy.

Lobbyists for marketing companies have worked tirelessly to erode regulatory authority over legit" telemarketing companies, while simultaneously ensuring rules include vast loopholes for legitimate" behavior. They also shape a press and policy discourse that fixates exclusively on outright scammers, and not on the ordinary, giant, everyday companies that utilize many of the same tactics to annoy users.

Given its limited resources, regulators like the FCC like to go after smaller robocall scammers and telecom industry enablers they can easily defeat in court, though they're less likely to consistently go after bigger, above board" fish that harass U.S. consumers (notice the huge ratio of telecom giants in the list above, often busy trying to upsell American consumers to products and services they don't want).

At the same time, the fines levied are usually a small fraction of the money that's been gleaned over decades, and the vast, vast majority of FTC and FCC fines on this subject are never collected at all.

So while the attack on car warranty robocalls specifically is a great and laudable thing, there's a lot more work that needs doing. Especially as it pertains to giving consumers greater ability to avoid harassment by velour track suit wearing scumbags and respectable businesses" alike.