Joint Trades' Comment re: Call Blocking

INTRODUCTION AND SUMMARY

The American Bankers Association (ABA), ACA International, American Financial Services Association, Consumer Bankers Association, Credit Union National Association, Mortgage Bankers Association, National Association of Federally-Insured Credit Unions, National Council of Higher Education Resources, and Student Loan Servicing Alliance (the Associations) appreciate the opportunity to comment on the Eighth Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (for Docket No. 17-59) and Third Notice of Inquiry (for Docket No. 17-59) (collectively, the Notice). In the Notice, the Federal Communications Commission (Commission) proposes additional measures to combat illegal calls, seeks comment on how best to notify legitimate callers of erroneously blocked calls, and seeks comment on how frequently outbound calling numbers are erroneously labeled as "spam" or with another derogatory label, among other questions the Commission posed.

The Associations strongly support the Commission's efforts to eliminate illegal automated calls. Banks, credit unions, and other financial services providers – and their customers – are negatively impacted by bad actors that increasingly place calls that impersonate legitimate companies with intent to defraud. These bad actors at times illegally "spoof" phone numbers belonging to our members by causing the call recipient's caller ID to display the name of a legitimate company instead of the name of the actual caller, who is seeking to defraud the recipient. We agree with the Commission that a caller ID device can be used to provide confirmation to the consumer that an incoming call was not illegally spoofed. We urge the Commission to prohibit the display of data on the consumer's caller ID device when the authenticity of the incoming call cannot be adequately verified through a direct and verified relationship with the call originator.

As the Commission takes additional action to combat illegal calls, we also urge the Commission to protect the lawful and consumer-benefitting calls that our members place. Banks, credit unions, and other financial institutions place large numbers of fraud alerts, past-due notifications, and other servicing calls in a short timeframe, and these calls may have low average call duration and low completion ratios—three attributes that the Commission has suggested voice service providers and their third-party analytics service providers use to block calls based on analytics. We urge the Commission to state that these factors alone are not sufficient for a voice service provider to block calls based on "reasonable analytics" generally or to conclude that calls are "highly likely to be illegal."

Our members report that the informational calls that they place, including fraud alerts and servicing calls, continue to be mislabeled as "spam" based on the analytics of voice service providers or their third-party analytics service providers. This can discourage customers from answering the call or lead voice service providers or third-party analytics service providers to block the call. Both of these results prevent consumers from receiving important and often time-sensitive information. The Commission's rules require voice service providers to provide immediate notification to the caller when the provider blocks a call, through a Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) or ISDN User Part (ISUP) response code. We urge the Commission to require ;voice service providers to provide callers with the same redress options when calling numbers are mislabeled as when calls are blocked. Specifically, a provider (or its third-party service provider) should be required to provide immediate notification whenever a derogatory label is placed on a call and provide the caller with an opportunity to dispute that label.

In the Notice, the Commission proposes to require all voice service providers to block calls using a "reasonable do not originate" (DNO) list—i.e., a list of phone numbers from which an outbound call is highly likely to be illegal and from which calls should not originate—and to limit the phone numbers that can be included on the DNO list to invalid, unallocated, and unused numbers, as well as numbers for which the subscriber to the number has requested blocking.5 We support the Commission's proposal but caution the Commission not to expand the category of phone numbers that can be placed on a DNO list unless the agency has identified an additional category of numbers that have clear indicia that the calls were placed illegally.

We also ask the Commission to require entities blocking calls based on analytics to notify callers by using SIP Code 608 or 603+ and not by using any other code. We believe that the standard for SIP Code 603+ holds potential for providing effective notification for callers when their call is blocked, but the Commission should not provide its endorsement of this code until the code has been tested and implemented.

Download the joint comment letter to read the full text.