Robocall

A robocall is a phone call made with an autodialer or one that plays a prerecorded or artificial voice. Some are legal, like a reminder you agreed to receive; the ones aimed at a business number listed online are usually a scam or a sales pitch.

Legal and illegal robocalls

The rules come from the Telephone Consumer Protection Act and the FCC’s rules under it. A robocall to a mobile phone needs the called person’s prior consent unless it is an emergency call, and a prerecorded telemarketing call to a home or mobile number needs prior written consent, which can be given on paper or electronically, including through a website form or a keypress. Since February 2024 the FCC has treated AI-generated voices as artificial voices, so an AI voice call is illegal unless the person agreed to it or the caller is exempt.

That leaves room for legitimate automated calls. The FCC’s consumer guide lists market research and polling calls and calls from tax-exempt nonprofits as permitted to landlines, along with calls about school closings or flight information. Appointment reminders and delivery notices you signed up for are robocalls too.

Every prerecorded message, wanted or not, has to say who it is from. The FCC’s rules require it to state the name of the business or person responsible at the start, give a phone number for them, and, for telemarketing, offer an automated opt-out by voice or keypress within two seconds of that identification. A prerecorded message that will not say who is calling is breaking that rule.

Spoofing, and why blocking by number fails

Robocallers often fake the number on your caller ID. The FCC calls it spoofing, and “neighbor spoofing” makes the call look like it comes from a local number, or from a company or agency you already trust. Spoofing with intent to defraud, cause harm or wrongfully obtain anything of value is illegal under the law’s caller ID provisions, but the dialer can show a different number on the next call, so a block list built from numbers is always behind.

The networks’ answer is STIR/SHAKEN, a caller ID authentication framework. The originating carrier signs the caller ID as legitimate and the carriers downstream validate it, so the phone company receiving the call can check that it really comes from the number displayed. The FCC required voice providers to build it into the internet-protocol parts of their networks by June 30, 2021, and it supports the blocking decisions and call labels carriers apply. It works only on IP networks, and it checks the number, not the caller’s intent: a call can pass authentication and still be one you never wanted.

Robocalls aimed at business numbers

A trade shop’s number is on Google, on Yelp, on the truck and on every invoice. Dialers collect those numbers and call them in bulk. Each call rings the office during the day, and after hours it follows your forwarding to the tech on duty, who climbs out from under a sink to hear “your Google listing is about to be suspended, press 1”. Every one of those costs attention, and on an answering service or any per-minute plan it costs money as well.

Three facts are worth knowing about business lines:

• The Do Not Call Registry does not cover them. The FTC says the National Do Not Call Registry is for personal phone numbers; business numbers are not covered.
• Tying up your lines is its own violation. The TCPA makes it unlawful to use an autodialer in a way that engages two or more lines of a multi-line business at the same time.
• Google does make some automated calls. Google says it places automated calls from a set of designated numbers to check business information on Google Maps or to make reservations and appointments for its users. It also says those calls never ask you to sign up for a service, pay money or give personal information, and it warns that suspicious callers may say they work “with Google” or “for Google” to sell schemes and online marketing services. For a suspicious call, Google’s advice is to hang up without pressing any buttons.

What to do when one gets through

• Hang up. If a caller or a recording asks you to press a button to stop the calls, the FCC’s advice is to just hang up: scammers use the trick to identify potential targets.
• Do not answer questions, especially ones that can be answered “yes” or “no”.
• Report it to the FTC at ReportFraud.ftc.gov or to the FCC’s consumer complaint center, and note if your own number is being spoofed.
• Forward scam texts to 7726 (SPAM); the FCC says most mobile carriers support it.
• Ask your phone company about its call blocking tools. The FCC allows carriers to block robocalls by default based on reasonable analytics.

For the steps an owner can take on the line itself, see how to stop robocalls reaching your business line.

The other risk: blocking real callers

A pharmacy’s automated appointment reminder, a supplier’s delivery notice or one of Google’s automated calls can sound like a dialer for the first few seconds. A screen that hangs up on anything unusual will eventually drop a call you wanted, so whatever screens your line should show you what it screened.

On DispatchLine, with spam screening on, the AI receptionist ends robocalls within seconds and marks each one as spam in your call log; see spam and robocalls.

Related terms

• TCPA, the federal law that restricts automated calls and texts
• Minutes, how a screened call is counted
• IVR, the “press 1” menus that dialers imitate
• Call forwarding, how a spam call reaches the tech after hours
• Guide: Spam and robocalls

Sources: the FCC’s guides Stop Unwanted Robocalls and Texts, Caller ID Spoofing and Combating Spoofed Robocalls with Caller ID Authentication; 47 U.S.C. § 227; 47 CFR 64.1200; the FTC’s Do Not Call Registry FAQs; and Google Business Profile Help, Help protect against fraudulent calls and texts.