Ross: How to defeat the coming assault of robocalls
May 16, 2019, 8:24 AM | Updated: May 17, 2019, 6:53 am
According to the FCC, Americans will be assaulted by as many as 75 billion robocalls this year. And you will be tricked into answering, because the caller ID will deceive you with what looks like a local number.
So what is FCC Chairman Ajit Pai going to do about it?
“We’ve authorized carriers to block robocalls from certain spoofed numbers,” he recently said.
Wait – you’ve just now authorized carriers to block calls from spoofed numbers?
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Would it be rude of me to ask why it’s even possible to spoof a caller ID number? Isn’t displaying the real phone number pretty much the only job of caller ID?
Oh, but here’s the really amazing thing.
CBS Reporter Mola Lenghi says “On June 6, The FCC is scheduled to vote on whether to allow the FCC to block those robocalls.”
The FCC has to vote on whether to block unwanted robocalls. Isn’t number-spoofing technically phone fraud? What’s to vote on?
But this is the world we live in. And I guess we are just going to have to protect ourselves. You know what the real problem is – everybody’s home now.
Back in the day, robocalling didn’t make sense because half of the time nobody was home. Today, “home” is your pocket. So nobody’s ever “not home.”
The good news is every smart phone has a not-home feature. We’re just gonna have to start using it.
“But Dave, what about FOMO – Fear of Missing Out?”
Well, according to my daughter, the new thing is “JOMO” — The Joy of Missing Out.
And if anything truly important happens, you’ll hear it on the radio.
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Tune in to KIRO Newsradio weekdays at 5am for Dave Ross on Seattle's Morning News.
