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Stopping Illegal Robocalls Where They Start

Can We Get Telemarketing Back on the Rails?

Every American is familiar with the onslaught of unwanted telephone calls – usually referred to as robocalls. Many people get a few each week; some get several every day. The standard advice now is “don’t answer the phone if you don’t recognize the calling number.” That’s not how the telephone is supposed to work. How did it get so broken?…

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Solving the Business Telemarketing Dilemma

Promotion of business services is one of the most prolific applications of telemarketing. If you are a purveyor of credit card processing services, or you help businesses get themselves listed in on-line directories, or you offer search engine optimization, or you provide funding to small businesses, robocalling can be an effective advertising channel. It doesn’t cost much to call 1,000…

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Service Provider Compliance with 47 CFR § 64.1200(n)(4) – Part II

In our previous post, we explained how the FCC regulations obligate telephone service providers to play an important role in keeping illegal calls off the network. The FCC does not dictate what a provider needs to do, but we have collected below a set of reasonable steps that can help an originating voice service provider meet the FCC mandate. Intermediate…

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Service Provider Compliance with 47 CFR § 64.1200(n)(4) – Part I

The FCC’s regulations implementing the TCPA put many obligations on those initiating calling (and texting) campaigns. But there’s an important provision that can put a significant burden on telephone service providers. It says: (n) A voice service provider must: (4) Take affirmative, effective measures to prevent new and renewing customers from using its network to originate illegal calls, including knowing…

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RRAPTOR Takes on Fraudulent Utility Calls

RRAPTOR is a robocall surveillance platform that captures thousands of robocalls daily. It analyzes and groups them in many different ways, including matching keywords and phrases in the messages they play as well as inspecting the phone numbers that they use and the STIR/SHAKEN signatures they carry. Some of the most troubling calls are those that prey on vulnerable populations…

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Best Practices for Lead Generators

A large fraction of the robocalls we receive are placed by Lead Generators. This cottage industry is part of the massive world of marketing. Like a TV commercial or a billboard or a post card in your mailbox, a phone call from a lead generator is an attempt to sell you some product or service. Because telephone calls are more…

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Attestation Inflation – The ABC’s of Signing Calls

Virtually all VoIP call originators are now REQUIRED to sign their calls -- see our earlier post about this mandate. Despite this, some intermediate providers are not requiring their upstreams to properly sign their calls (or insisting on a thorough explanation of why they are sending calls unsigned). So the intermediate is signing calls – either on behalf of their…

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RRAPTOR Live at the SIP Forum’s STIR/SHAKEN Enterprise Summit Oct. 18

The SIP Forum's twice-yearly events have been the place to go for the latest insights on STIR/SHAKEN. The week of October 17, they will hold their Enterprise Summit virtual event. It will be free to attend, just as their spring SIPNOC event was. SIPNOC drew an impressive audience with plenty of useful information being shared. ZipDX has a session on…

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KYC & RMD Go Hand-in-Glove: How the Robocall Mitigation Database is an Integral Part of Proper Know-Your-Customer Diligence

The Robocall Mitigation Database (RMD) is a cornerstone of the FCC’s Call Authentication (STIR/SHAKEN) Framework and must be incorporated into every provider’s Know-Your-Customer processes. Exactly how you do this will depend on the roles played by you and your call source along the call path. The table below shows the possibilities: We are not attorneys, but ZipDX puts this forward…

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FCC Says Neighbor Spoofing Is Illegal

Last fall I posted, "Shouldn’t Neighbor Spoofing Be Illegal? Wait! It Already Is!" Most telecom experts think that if a telephone number is assigned to you, or you have the permission of the assignee, it is perfectly fine to use that number as your caller-ID when placing calls. But the Truth In Caller-ID Act does not say that. It says…

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