The American Bankers Association urged the Federal Communications Commission to take steps to stop the illegal “spoofing” of outbound calls placed by banks in comments filed with the Federal Communications Commission on Sept. 16. Bank calls are spoofed by bad actors who cause the call recipient’s caller ID to display the name of a legitimate company instead of the name of the actual caller in an attempt to defraud the recipient. To combat this illegal practice, ABA urged the agency to ensure that bank calls receive the highest form of attestation that can be provided under the STIR/SHAKEN call authentication framework, which the FCC has required most telephone companies to adopt.
ABA also urged the FCC not to impose additional obligations on telephone companies that originate lawful “non-conversational” calls, defined as calls with an average duration of less than two minutes, and not to restrict the use of U.S. phone numbers to originate authenticated calls from abroad to U.S. customers.
