In a bid to cut down on spam phone calls, the Federal Trade Commission has fined and banned four companies for making billions of illegal robocalls.
The four companies in question are NetDotSolutions, Higher Goals Marketing, Veterans of America, and Pointbreak Media. Combined, they made billions of unwanted illegal robocalls about everything from debt relief services and fake charities to auto warranties, Google search services, and home security systems.
"We have brought dozens of cases targeting illegal robocalls, and fighting unwanted calls remains one of our highest priorities," Andrew Smith, Director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection, said in a statement.
All of the companies agreed to settle with the FTC, which charged them with violating the FTC Act, Telemarketing Sales Rule (TSR), and the Do Not Call (DNC) provisions. As part of the settlement, court orders stipulate that, "the defendants are banned from robocalling and most telemarketing activities, including those using an automatic dialer, and will pay significant financial judgments." Those final judgements vary in value between $500,000 and $3 million each.
One of the defendants provided the FTC with the software platform they used to make over a billion robocalls, which could help with future prosecutions or identifying illegal activity in relation to robocalls.
In November, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai sent letters to 14 carriers—including AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon—that pushed them to quickly adopt an authentication system that can differentiate between legit phone calls and spoofed ones.
The authentication system Pai wants is called the "SHAKEN/STIR framework," an industry-developed standard. In January, T-Mobile became the first in the industry to launch a caller-verification feature based on that standard. Last month, Pai praised that move, and reiterated his call for everyone to do so by year's end.