New caller ID law now in place to stop and reduce the wave of spam calls

#Canada; #NewLaws; #CommunicationsRegulator; #telemarketers; #CRTC

Ottawa/Canadian-Media: New laws are being considered by Canada’s telecommunications regulator to enable phone companies in identifying the caller to help users inundated by nuisance phone calls from telemarketers.

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The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) said in a news release Tuesday advising phone companies to implement technology on their networks to weed out calls that look like familiar Canadian phone numbers but are in fact unsolicited spam and nuisance calls from dodgy companies.

“Many Canadians are now able to determine which calls can be trusted thanks to a new technology aimed at combating spoofed calls named STIR/SHAKEN*…As of today, telecommunications service providers will certify whether a caller’s identity can be trusted by verifying the caller ID information for Internet Protocol-based voice calls. This new technology will help reduce the frequency and impact of caller ID spoofing. As service providers continue to upgrade their IP networks and offer compatible phones to their customers, more and more Canadians will be able to see the effects of STIR/SHAKEN.” CRTC News release said Nov 30.
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Ian Scott, CRTC chair announced earlier this month, that the regulator intends to compel the phone companies to do more about cracking down on such calls, which make up as much as 25 percent of all phone calls on mobile networks in Canada right now.

“Most people likely perceive spoofed calls as a nuisance,” Scott said in a speech to a telecom conference earlier this month, CBC News reported.

Citing data from the U.S. Federal Communications Commission suggestive of more than 2,100 robocalls being made to phone users in the U.S. every second of every day, Scott said,

“The truth is, they’re more than that. They’re gateways for criminals to dupe hard-working people out of their money and their sensitive data. And they’re relentless,” CBC News reported.

Bell Canada has been testing out such a system, noted Scott in his speech, and managed to block 1.1 billion such calls on its network between July 2020 and October 2021.

Ultimately, Canada’s phone industry may adopt a system where users would see a red light where the caller’s identity has not been verified or green light next to incoming calls where the caller’s identity has been verified.