FCC combats spoofed telephone calls

In an effort to combat “spoofed” telephone calls with falsified caller ID information that are not only a nuisance but resulted in an estimated $10.5 billion in consumer fraud loss in 2019 alone, the Federal Communications Commission issued a Report and Order and Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on March 11, to address spoofed calls. This Order and Further Notice is consistent with the Telephone Robocall Abuse Criminal Enforcement and Deterrence Act.

The Order would require voice service providers to implement the STIR/SHAKEN caller ID authentication framework (more on this below) in the internet protocol portions of their respective networks by June 30, 2021. The Further Notice proposes to require voice service providers to implement caller ID authentication pursuant to the TRACED Act enacted into law in December 2019, including a prohibition on charging consumers and small-business customers an additional line item charge for caller ID authentication.

“STIR” stands for the Secure Telephony Identity Revisited, which is comprised of protocols developed by the Industry Engineering Task Force. “SHAKEN” stands for the Signature-based Handling of Asserted information using toKENs, which standardizes how the STIR protocols are implemented by the telecommunications industry. The STIR/SHAKEN authentication and verification processes are focused on the transmission of encrypted information used to attest to the accuracy of the caller ID information transmitted with a call.

 

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