by Christian Wade
Connecticut is taking aim at telemarketers accused of bombarding the state’s consumers with hundreds of millions of ‘robocalls’ every year.
The state’s General Assembly approved a proposal last week that would expand the state’s anti-robocall statutes to cover text messages, ban “gateway” voice over internet protocol providers from facilitating overseas scammers’ access to the U.S. telecom networks and allow for enforcement action against calls received by Connecticut area codes, regardless of where they originate.
Under the proposal, telemarketers would also be prevented from contacting Connecticut residents before 9 a.m. and after 8 p.m., if signed into law by Gov. Ned Lamont.
Backers of the changes, which include Connecticut Attorney General William Tong, note that Connecticut’s robocall statutes have not been updated since 2015 and have failed to keep up with tactics used by scammers.
On Tuesday, Tong joined a group of AGs urging the Federal Communications Commission to update federal rules to clarify that telemarketers must get written consent to contact consumers before calling them.
The FCC is seeking comment on a proposed amendment to its rules on written consent under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act and proposals to strengthen protections against illegal text messages.
“For far too long, lead generator businesses have been allowed to bury fine print and stretch the definition of consent for the sake of profits. A consumer would never agree to thousands of pitches from businesses by checking one box on a website,” Tong said in a statement.
“The FCC must make the law clear— any business that wants to make legal telemarketing calls and texts must obtain our individual prior express consent,” he said.
In 2022, Connecticut consumers were bombarded with an estimated 471 million robocalls, according to Tong’s office. Of those, 26% were scams originating overseas using automated dialing systems, chatbots and prerecorded calls. VoIP gateway providers play a big role in facilitating these scams by enabling these foreign calls, Tong’s office says.
Connecticut is also a member of the Anti-Robocall Litigation Task Force, a group of AGs authorized to investigate and take legal action against companies responsible for routing significant volumes of illegal robocall traffic.
In May, New York Attorney General Letitia James filed a multi-state federal lawsuit against an Arizona-based company accused of facilitating “billions” of robocalls that “scammed” Americans out of millions of dollars.
The lawsuit alleges the company, a Voice over Internet Protocol provider, facilitated more than 7.5 billion calls to numbers on the National Do Not Call Registry, a database of consumers requesting to be excluded from robocalls.
The company has denied the allegations and pledged to “defend itself vigorously and vindicate its rights and reputation through the legal process.”
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Christian Wade is a contributor to The Center Square.
