The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) recently re-designated the Industry Traceback Group as its official organization to trace back illegal robocalls.
The Traceback Group was established about seven years ago by the industry trade group USTelecom. And the FCC began requiring U.S. voice providers to work with the Traceback Group in late 2022.
“The Industry Traceback Group (ITG) continues to fight to protect consumers against illegal robocalls, scammers and spoofers, and we’re honored that the FCC has once again recognized our important role in this work,” stated Jonathan Spalter, CEO of USTelecom – The Broadband Association.
Josh Bercu, executive director of the Traceback Group, said Traceback literally “traces back” a robocall to its source. USTelecom developed a system to trace the origin of a robocall by going back from provider to provider until finding the source. It’s a semi-automated system where each provider identifies where it received the call from.
“Not only can we learn about the caller and who let it into the country but also directly disrupt those call flows, and we can take steps to mitigate the traffic,” said Bercu.
Before the Traceback Group, there were legal requirements to subpoena each provider, and it could take months to trace back a call. Now, calls can be traced back to their source in a couple of days. “Some providers have automated it so they can respond in seconds or minutes within getting a request,” said Bercu.
Recently, the FCC issued a historic fine of nearly $300 million against the largest illegal robocall operation the agency has ever investigated.
Asked if the large fines are effective in deterring robocalls, Bercu said, “The fines and announcements are important to put a deterrent out there. Is that full amount going to be collected? Probably not. But we really need to do a multi-layer attack against these calls.”
He said the worst robocalls — the ones that scam people out of money or commit Social Security fraud — are on the decline. YouMail shows a 30% decline in scam robocalls from June to July 2023. And Robokiller reported a 21% decline in robocalls for first half of 2023 relative to same time period last year.
But robocallers are shifting to telemarketing calls, promoting such things as auto warranties or student loans. “Those are still very active,” said Bercu.
Why do robocalls keep happening even with all the concerted effort to stop them?
“These are the livelihood of the people on the other side,” said Bercu. “Criminals overseas are innovating too. I think the collective effort we are providing is working, but people aren’t just closing up shop and going home.”
STIR/SHAKEN
The FCC also requires voice providers to implement STIR/SHAKEN caller ID authentication.
Becu said STIR/SHAKEN targets spoofed calls, which use a number that seems local and legitimate, but is not the real number of the caller. STIR/SHAKEN is an authentication mechanism. It checks the signature on a call and determines if it's trustworthy. He said STIR/SHAKEN is “complementary” to the Traceback Group
But in the case of the auto warranty telemarketing calls which the FCC just fined, those calls were made from real numbers, and STIR/SHAKEN doesn’t address that.
Whereas Traceback is targeting all kinds of robocalls and is indifferent whether a call is spoofed or not.