WASHINGTON, D.C. — Last week, on Wednesday, Maine U.S. Sen. Angus King announced he was co-sponsoring legislation aimed at robocallers. In his words, it “gives regulators more resources to find robocall scammers, increases penalties for violators and promotes call authentication and blocking adoption.
Knowing the power of a good acronym, King said the new legislation is being called the TRACE Act, for telephone robocall abuse criminal enforcement deterrence.
“Illegal robocalls are not only irritating, they are often predatory and malicious,” King said in the news release announcing the new bill, which has co-sponsors from both sides of the aisle. “Unfortunately, they have only become worse with technological advances that have driven down the price of mass phone calls and facilitated new tactics like spoofing.”
In fact, King notes that according to YouMail, an estimated 17.7 billion scam robocalls were made in the United States in 2018 — about 70 scam robocalls per every adult. And 10.3 billion of those were classified as relating to identity theft.
For more on the act, go here.
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