The CRTC is acknowledging that it is having a tough time keeping up with ‘miscreants’ placing unwanted telemarketing calls to Canadians.
In its latest report to Industry Minister James Moore on the operation of the National Do Not Call List, the CRTC identifies “Challenges and Opportunities.” The first “opportunity” listed deals with caller identification spoofing:
“A major challenge has emerged in the form of caller identification (ID) “spoofing,” which is the falsification of the phone number that appears on consumers’ caller ID displays.”
Caller ID spoofing is an important capability that was built into the phone standards to enable people to work from one location but show a different caller identification. This way, for example, a call centre can show the toll-free call back information for the underlying client, not the agent, who may be located half way around the world. Placing such information into the caller ID field is actually a requirement in the CRTC’s telemarketing rules.
But we have all been victims of caller ID spoofing that is done for less than honourable purposes. In some cases, the CRTC has found that the ‘miscreant’ operators have used the call identification of legitimate businesses to make their unwanted calls. In one such case, more than 30,000 calls per day were being made, falsely being represented as being originated by a well known, legitimate Canadian firm.
The CRTC joined an international inter-agency collective to combat caller ID spoofing. The Commission has acknowledged that “It is extremely challenging to enforce the Rules in such circumstances given the difficulty in tracing such calls to their origin, which is often outside of Canada.”
The CRTC says that “It is working with the private sector on a system to allow consumers to report spoofed calls by simply keying in a number on their phones.”
In a letter widely distributed to telecom service providers in early October, CRTC Telecom Vice-chair Peter Menzies said:
Notwithstanding the CRTC’s success to date in reducing unwanted calls, our ability to enforce the law has been hampered by caller ID spoofing which is used by certain telemarketers to hide their true identity. The telephony honeypot and other tools, such as *50, will enrich the much needed intelligence to address the problem of caller ID spoofing.
The *50 program will enable consumers to report abusive telephone calls, along with the associated call detail records, to carriers, reputational services and law enforcement, free-of-charge. These records will enable carriers and the CRTC to determine the origin of the call, thereby thwarting miscreants’ attempts to hide their true identity and provide the necessary information for investigations. The CRTC will be deploying *50 as a voluntary and pilot program for carriers in the coming months with the goal of formally launching the program in late 2015.
Keep in mind that there is already a “Call Trace” feature for customers to help law enforcement tracing of calls. In most cases, that involves dialing “*57” immediately after hanging up on a threatening or abusive call. That feature puts a flag into a call detail record, enabling your phone company to only release to law enforcement personnel the correct record out of potentially dozens of calls you received that day. Thanks to the Supreme Court’s decision in June [R vs Spencer], the police get the call information once they go to your phone company with a warrant.
The CRTC consideration of a different code number – *50 – raises all sorts of issues. Will consumers be confused by having two different numbers for call trace? Does the CRTC expect carriers to release the call detail records without production of a warrant?
Will this actually be effective in stopping calls from off shore ‘miscreants’?
How much are Canadians spending to maintain the enforcement infrastructure? The CRTC spent just over $3M in its enforcement branch and there was an additional $2.5M spent administering the do not call list and the complaint databases. The CRTC issued $1M in notices of penalties but it did not report how much of the $1M was actually collected. Note that any funds collected are sent to the general revenues of the government.
I continue to receive calls from air duct cleaning services and companies that promise to fix my credit score, or my favourite, “the technical department of Windows.” The most effective way to deal with them is very un-Canadian and very low-tech.
Just hang up.