Robocalls proliferate in Las Vegas, nationwide but remain difficult to stop

Who's on the line? A robocall? Again?

Likely so. On Dec. 10, in its National Robocall Index, YouMail, an Irvine, Calif., company offering an intelligent digital receptionist system, said its customers in November received 980.8 million robocalls — computerized calls that deliver a recorded message or are patched to live people. That total was up 43 percent from October, the first month recorded.

Las Vegas' November robocall count was 7.4 million, YouMail said, down 16 percent from October. New York led the nation with 49.6 million robocalls in November, followed by Atlanta with 42.2 million. YouMail, which offers its basic robocall-blocking service for free, extrapolated its data for the month from 50 million customers, mostly cellphone users.

Meanwhile, Nomorobo, a Long Island, N.Y., company offering a free screening system for landline and voice over Internet protocol calls, said 1,968 of 5,228 November calls in area codes 702 and 725 were robocalls, or 37.6 percent.

Nomorobo owner Aaron Foss said his company blocked 5.5 million robocalls for users in November, or 40 percent of the 13.7 million calls received.

Although the Federal Trade Commission's Do Not Call registry, instituted in 2003, was supposed to stop them, robocalls remain a scourge. In a May statement, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler said his agency in 2014 received more than 215,000 complaints related to unwanted and intrusive calls and texts.

Curbing robocalls is difficult. As several outlets, including the Los Angeles Times, have reported, although many honest telemarketing companies honor people's wishes not to be called, some don't. Do Not Call Registry coordinator Bikram Bandy told NPR it's illegal for telemarketers to use autodialing systems, whether consumers are on the registry or not. But plenty do, he said.

The Do Not Call Registry applies only to telemarketers. Charities, pollsters and government agencies are exempt. So are many calls from bill collectors, which YouMail CEO Alex Quilici said accounted for 75 percent of all November's robocalls. Consumers agree to them when they sign up for credit cards, bank services or student loans, Quilici said.

These calls linger. The Federal Trade Commission's website says telemarketers may call consumers for up to 18 months after the consumer's last purchase, delivery, or payment — even if that consumer's number is on the National Do Not Call Registry.

Cellphone users should brace for more robocalls. Congress in November voted in an exception to the 1991 Telephone Consumer Protection Act that will allow the use of robocalls to pursue federal government-backed debt. As a countermeasure, Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., proposed a bill, dubbed the HANG-UP (Helping Americans Never Get Unwanted Phone Calls) Act to stop the carve-out. Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is among the measure's co-sponsors.

Other lawmakers have expressed dismay at mounting robocalls. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, at a Special Commission on Aging in June, said, "We thought we had put an end to the plague of unwelcomed telemarketers who were interrupting Americans morning, noon and night. But now, nearly 12 years later, phones are once again ringing off the hook."

Pressed by Collins and Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., the Federal Communications Commission in June voted 3-2 to let phone carriers provide call-blocking technology on request to consumers. In July, attorneys general from 44 states, including Nevada, wrote to the CEOs of Sprint Corp., CenturyLink, T-Mobile and Verizon Communications, emphasizing that there are no legal barriers to prevent offering such technology.

Quilici said robocalls have spread partly because they're cheap.

"It costs almost nothing to set up a dialer," Quilici said, "and almost nothing to place the calls. Calls that get answered cost fractions of a penny. And calls that ring five times and don't get answered cost nothing."

Foss added that scamming robocallers are adept at "spoofing" — falsifying numbers call recipients see on caller ID. A November Consumers Union report says voice over Internet protocol call spoofing is nearly impossible to catch because calls can be routed through four or five networks.

The potential gain from scams is huge. Consumers Union, Consumer Reports' policy and action division, estimates Americans lose $350 million to phone scams annually.

"The risks are really low and the rewards are really high," Foss said.

After YouMail issued its latest index, Consumers Union reiterated its call for signatures to an anti-robocall petition. Consumer Union's website says half a million people have signed the petition, which asks top phone companies to offer robocall-blocking tools. The group had representatives in Phoenix on Tuesday to deliver collected signatures to Verizon Communications' main office there.

Quilici and Foss think phone carriers might someday partner with companies like theirs to stop robocalls as a matter of customer service.

"Our take is that solving this problem will work the way solving email spam has worked," Quilici said. "Technology has improved and with services like Gmail and others, we still get a few spam emails coming through, but not the deluge you got before. Robocalls will be the same way; you'll get a few spam phone calls, but it won't be the craziness we have now."

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