Fifty-four attorneys general from around the country, including Iowa’s Tom Miller, penned a letter earlier this week urging the U.S. Senate to enact the Telephone Robocall Abuse Criminal Enforcement and Deterrence (TRACED) Act. “Robocalls are the bane of our existence,” Miller says. “As AGs, we’re on the front lines of helping consumers who are harassed and scammed by these unwanted calls, many of which come from overseas. The problem demands a federal response.” The act would enable states, federal regulators and telecom providers to take steps to combat the illegal calls. It would require voice service providers to implement a call authentication framework to help block unwanted calls and it would create an interagency working group to take additional actions to reduce robocalls and hold telemarketers and scammers accountable. It is estimated that more than 48 billion robocalls were made in 2018, making them the number one consumer complaints to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and Federal Communications Commission (FCC). According to robocall tracker, YouMail, 4.9 billion calls, or about 15 per person, have been made in February of this year alone.
