US law against robocalls goes into effect

US President Trump has signed the Traced Act, which introduces a package of measures to reduce robocalls. Among other things, the law regulates the adoption of the Stir/Shaken framework with which telecom companies validate conversations.

The Traced bill signed this week aims to protect Americans from the growing problem of robocalls. These are automated telephone calls, intended to defraud citizens or to advertise. The calls use call id spoofing, which makes it look like legitimate people are calling. With both US telecom providers and the Federal Communications Commission, most complaints are about robocalls and according to YouMail estimates, 54 billion robot calls were made in the US in 2019.

The Traced Act proposes “within a reasonable time” adoption of the Stir/Shaken framework. Shaken stands for Signature-based Handling of Asserted Information Using toKENs and Stir is an acronym for Secure Telephone Identity Revisited. The basis of the Stir/Shaken system is the verification of a legitimate caller ID by telecom company A, which then adds a digital signature to the call. Telecom company B checks the signature when handling the call and shows the recipient of the call that it is a legitimate call.

On Android, smartphones with support show a Caller Verified notification. Apple supports the technology with iOS 13, but users of iPhones do not receive the notification: they have to check the call logs to see if they are robocalls. This will change in the future. Twelve US providers already support Stir/Shaken.

Furthermore, the Traced Act extends the powers of the FCC and the FTC to deal with robocalls. For example, the term within which they can go after scammers has been extended from one to four years and they can impose higher fines. The Public Prosecution Service will also set up a task force to tackle scammers legally.