Knowing Your Rights: A Guide to Unwanted Robocalls

Robocalls are pre-recorded telephone calls used by telemarketers, political parties, and health care providers, among others, to promote products and services, or a specific agenda. A robocall can be legal or illegal.

Robocalls can be annoying because most of them are unsolicited and they have a way of coming through when you least expect them. If you're a victim of illegal robocalls, you can file a lawsuit for unwanted robocalls.

Robocalls Defined

Robocalls are unsolicited calls, pre-recorded voice messages, or bulk SMS made by telemarketers to potential consumers. These calls are typically meant to promote the caller's business' products and services.

Besides telemarketers, political parties, health care providers, or organizations with noble courses can make such calls. While some robocalls come from legit companies, most come from scammers trying to get sensitive information from their victims. Unsolicited robocalls are illegal and victims of such calls can file complaints with the Telephone Consumer Protection Authority—TCPA.

Consumer Protection Regulations

Telephone Consumer Protection Authority

The TCPA was passed by Congress to address the prevalence of nuisance, intrusive, and unsolicited calls from telemarketers through organic and automated voice calls, faxes, and SMS. Simply put, the TCPA protects consumers' privacy rights.

Telemarketing Sales Rule

The FTC enforces the Telemarketing Sales Rule, which: Requires telemarketers to their identities, employers, and purpose of contacting their targets; Prohibits misrepresentations of facts;

Telephone Robocall Abuse Criminal Enforcement and Deterrence Act (TRACED Act)

The TRACED Act was enacted on December 31, 2019, to enhance enforcement against robocalls made by telemarketers and scammers. The primary purpose of the TRACED Act was to establish call authentication frameworks and mitigation criteria for preventing robocalls. Robocalls must meet specific requirements to be permissible under the law, including:

Legal robocalls can include political calls from candidates running for office or their representatives, nonprofit organizations with a noble course, such as charities requesting donations, and health or emergency care providers. Non-advertising non-marketing calls are also considered legal.

How to Stop Robocalls?

Unsolicited robocalls are federally regulated, meaning they're illegal in all states. But how can one stop robocalls? They're many ways of dealing with robocalls, including:

Filing a complaint with the FCC or FTC;

Registering your telephone phone with the national Do-Not-Call registry, or Opting out from receiving calls from telemarketers and others.

Telemarketers are prohibited from calling telephone numbers that have been registered in the national Do-Not-Call registry. However, just because your number is registered in this registry doesn't mean you'll never receive robocalls.

The objective of the registry is to guide law-abiding businesses when determining who to contact. On the other hand, filing complaints with the FTC or FCC help the government understand robocall trends and use such information to develop strategies to resolve the situation.

How to Detect and Avoid Robocalls

Knowing how to identify and avoid potential robocalls is the first step toward protecting yourself from scammers. The following tips can help you detect and avoid potential robocalls:

Never respond to strange, unknown, and suspicious numbers; Never share sensitive information with third parties;

Tread cautiously if someone pressures you to share personal information; Never make rushed payments over the phone or online;

Scammers spoof phone numbers to persuade their victims to respond; Government agencies don't contact people to ask for their personal information or money. Do due diligence before donating to charities;

If the caller's identity sounds generic, it's probably a scam;

Callers who claim to know but do not know your name are scammers;

What to do if you answer a Robocall

If you answer a call and realize it's a robocall, you can hang up immediately or take the following measures: Avoid Affirmative Responses

Many robocalls start with “Hello, can you hear me?” to which most people reply “Yes”. Sadly, rogue callers can use such affirmative responses (Yes) as proof of consent. So, avoid affirmative responses if you can.

Never Follow Instructions from Bots

Most telemarketers use bots to market their businesses. A bot can prompt you to take a specific action, like pressing a number, which you shouldn't do. Obeying instructions from bots means you gave consent.

Give Misleading Information

Another ingenious way to throw robocallers off their tracks is by acting calm and giving false answers to their questions. Cooperating with scammers reduces the chances of contacting you again.

Robocalls can be legal or illegal depending if they're consented to or unsolicited. A robocall lawyer can review your case and recommend the best way to resolve the situation.