February 15, 2022
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced that it will file a lawsuit against Voice-over-Internet Protocol (VoIP) service providers who refuse to give information during robocall investigations.
These demands are not voluntary. Companies that don’t respond fully, or don’t respond at all, will have to answer to a federal district court judge, as these cases demonstrate,” said Samuel Levine, the Director of FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection.
The Commission charged Alcazar Networks in December 2020 with illegal telemarketing calls after the company gave VoIP services to an Indian firm that used “911” as the caller ID and misrepresented the Social Security Administration.
The FTC likewise released two orders mandating the XCast Labs and Deltracon Inc VoIP service providers to provide the information requested as part of a series of m investigations on illegal robocalls.
In both instances, the FTC filed petitions with a federal court to enforce compliance with civil investigative demands released last January.
According to official and updated FTC data, the actual number of received robocall complaints between January and September 2021 is 3,395,386, with 2,554,358 of them being automated and a mere 841,027 coming from actual live callers.
The FTC has undertaken numerous enforcement actions against more than 500 companies and 400 individuals since the U.S. National Do Not Call Registry started accepting registrations in 2005.
FCC’s order also intensified the maximum penalty for every intentional unlawful robocall to $10,000. This excludes the forfeiture penalty amount that the commission earlier proposed.
For more information, read the original story in BleepingComputer.
