The Federal Communications Commission voted today to issue a notice of proposed rulemaking that would adopt several American Bankers Association requests to modernize the FCC’s Telephone Consumer Protection Act rules and combat illegal call spoofing.
The TCPA is a 1991 law that regulates telemarketing and informational calls using an autodialer or artificial or prerecorded voice. Under a draft version of the rulemaking, the FCC’s proposal would make several changes to the FCC’s TCPA rules that ABA has urged the commission to make. They include rescinding or modifying a 2024 rule that broadly expanded what messages are covered when a customer revokes consent (the “revoke all” rule); eliminating the “provided number” condition that allows banks and other financial institutions to place calls under an existing exemption for fraud alerts only to numbers that were provided by the customer; and deleting the requirement that a caller be placed on an internal “do not call” list when the caller requests not to receive telemarketing calls.
In remarks from the dais, Commissioner Olivia Trusty expressed support for the FCC’s reexamination of the “revoke all” rule, noting the concerns that ABA and a consumer group jointly raised in a September letter to the agency.
As for combating illegal call spoofing, the FCC is proposing to enhance the effectiveness of the STIR/SHAKEN call authentication framework and to require voice service providers that transmit caller identity information to employ reasonable measures to verify the accuracy of the information transmitted, among other changes. ABA has urged the FCC to add a verification requirement to the STIR/SHAKEN framework since 2023.
In a statement, ABA President and CEO Rob Nichols thanked the FCC “for taking this important step forward in the fight against fraud.”
“It is too easy for fraudsters to spoof real bank names on caller ID, and today’s FCC vote advancing a proposal to strengthen the call authentication framework will help protect consumers and legitimate businesses,” he said. “We look forward to reviewing the proposal and working with the commission to combat fraud.”
