The agency said the two men had made roughly a billion robocalls over several months pretending to offer health insurance plans from Blue Cross Blue Shield and Cigna, with millions of spoofed calls per day, many knowingly made to customers on the Do Not Call list.If so whoever your sending them to might have you accidentally blocked or have a block set up thru Verizon (call and messaging block or a block thru smart family) 3 In March, the agency levied its largest-ever penalty, fining a pair of Texas-based robocall scammers $225 million. Earlier this year, the FCC launched a 'Robocall Response Team' and sent cease-and-desist letters to six voice providers transmitting robocall scams on behalf of clients.

Since then, the agency has grown more aggressive in tackling robocallers. It also required phone companies to implement technology designed to prevent calls from spoofed numbers by this past June. In 2019, a bipartisan bill called the TRACED Act gave the FCC and the Justice Department more tools to combat robocalls and scammers. The boom in scam texts has come as robocalls have slowed. Don't Fall For Child Tax Credit Scams Spam texts are up, while robocalls are starting to slow National The IRS Won't Be Calling, Emailing Or Texting.

Already in 2021, the commission has received nearly 10,000 complaints about scam texts. The FCC received roughly 14,000 complaints about unwanted text messages in 2020, up 146% from the year before.

In 2020, the report estimates, scam texts cost Americans $86 million. More than 47 billion spam texts have been sent so far in 2021, up 55% from the year before, according to an August report from RoboKiller, a spam blocking company. On Monday, the agency's acting chairwoman, Jessica Rosenworcel, announced she will ask the commission to begin creating a new set of federal rules that would govern spam texts, like those in place now for robocalls.įrom phony package delivery notices, to fake requests from banks for personal information, to supposed COVID-19 contact tracers looking for a photo of your vaccine card - text message scams are on the rise in the U.S., costing Americans millions of dollars.Įven as the federal government has worked to crack down on robocalls, scam texts have boomed in recent years, and that has captured growing attention inside the Federal Communications Commission.

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