Stronger legal protections against robocalls are on the State Attorney General’s legislative agenda in January.
Those annoying calls can come at any time and range from obvious scams to attempts to sell you something you probably don’t need and even to scare you into giving up money or personal information. So A.G. Bob Ferguson is working with Democratic Representative Mari Leavitt of University Place on a bill to make certain robocall activities violations of the Consumer Protection Act. They include using phony “spoofed” numbers, calling people on the federal “Do Not Call” registry and when phone providers knowingly allow illegal robocalling.
“It’s time to stop illegal robocalls,” Ferguson says. “The Legislature must give Washingtonians stronger and clearer legal protections against the daily bombardment of illegal robocalls — and provide additional tools to my office to hold bad actors accountable.”
“Our seniors, youth and most financially fragile neighbors are experiencing more and more scams in the form of robocalls and other electronic messages to cell phones,” Rep. Leavitt says. “These schemes aim to trick many of our neighbors, friends and loved ones. Our uncles, aunts, parents and grandparents are often anticipating calls to schedule needed care like medical appointments. But this also presents a prime opportunity for bad actors to prey on our senior citizens. Last year alone, these scam calls cost Americans billions. Addressing the gap in protections to root out these scams is the least we can do to protect our fellow Washingtonians.”
Ferguson’s office says more than 835,000 Washingtonians lost money to scam robocalls and nearly half of the more than 615 million robocalls that came into Washington last year were scam robocalls, so he wants to have more power to go after these crooks, including the authority to file lawsuits against phone company operators that allow illegal robocalls.
