“Hi, Can I Talk to you About your Cars Extended Warranty.”
If you have a cell phone, chances are you have received one of these annoying robocalls. The good news is change came June 30th. Every major voice provider in the US, including phone companies AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile and cable provider Comcast, implemented a technology called Stir/Shaken. Hopefully cutting back on these annoying scam calls.
How Big of a Problem Is It?
According to the Federal Communications Commission scam calls are the Number 1 customer complaint. To be fair there are some legal robocalls that are not bad or annoying. For example, you might receive a call from the pharmacy to tell you it’s time to refill your prescription. You have probably also received many scam robocalls about your cars extended warranty, fake banks, your social security number being stolen etc. They are a perfect scam because they are cheap to make and don’t require actual people making the calls.
What is Stir/Shaken?
Scammers are aware that people don’t answer an unfamiliar number on caller ID so they disguise their phone numbers to trick you into picking up. Stir/Shaken will require voice providers to verify where calls are coming from.
“Stir” stands for “secure telephone identity revisited” and “Shaken” for “signature-based handling of asserted information using tokens.” It works by ensuring that calls traveling through the phone networks have their caller ID “signed” as legitimate by originating carriers and validated by other carriers before the calls reach you.
Will I Stop Getting These Calls?
While this is the hope, it probably won’t be the reality. June 30th was a deadline, so some carriers have already been implementing Stir/Shaken. Scammers are good at their jobs, and they are always coming up with new ways to defraud you out of your money.
