The American Bankers Association on Monday expressed support for the Federal Communications Commission’s proposals to strengthen its numbering policies — which govern how phone numbers are distributed and sold — to combat criminals who place illegal calls that impersonate banks and other legitimate businesses. Seven other financial sector associations joined ABA’s comment letter.
ABA said it supported the FCC’s proposal to restrict the resale of phone numbers to a single level – that is, to require voice service providers that obtain phone numbers from another provider to provide those numbers to end users (consumers or businesses) and not resell the numbers to another party that will provide the number to an end user.
“When phone numbers are obtained, transferred or utilized through multiple layers of intermediaries, it obfuscates which entity is placing calls from the number (i.e., which entity controls the number), which provider vetted the caller, and which actor should be held responsible for unlawful traffic,” ABA said.
ABA also urged the FCC to restrict number “cycling,” also known as number “rotation,” in which a caller obtains a large quantity of numbers and places calls from each number on a rotating basis to avoid labeling and blocking. To support the FCC’s efforts, ABA shared an analysis that found six million calls were placed from six million distinct telephone numbers during a six-day period between May 28 and June 3 using a single prerecorded script.
