Verizon, one of the nation's largest wireless providers, is set to release new technology to stop robocalls from reaching your phone. The company is reportedly set to offer customers free spam-blocking tools by the end of the week. Americans received an estimated 47.8 billion robocalls in 2018. More than 46 percent of those were from scammers. Verizon announced in January it would ultimately offer free call-blocking tools, reports CBS News correspondent Anna Werner. That month alone, there were nearly 5.2 billion robocalls, a historic high. Verizon already offers a premium service, Call Filter, that includes spam detection and reporting features for $2.99/month. It will now offer some of those features for free. It's part of a national push to meet FCC protocols that allow carriers to verify calls with a "digital fingerprint" and weed out potential "spoofed" phone numbers. AT&T and Comcast announced last week they successfully conducted caller verification tests using the FCC guidelines. In November, T-Mobile took CBS News behind the scenes of its robocall crackdown. We saw its Scam ID program, which helps customers screen and block problem calls. A company vice president called efforts to stop scammers "an arms race." FCC chairman Ajit Pai has urged the nation's carriers to uniformly adopt the robocall protocols by the end of the year. Last month, he threatened "regulatory intervention" if they fail to meet that deadline.<doc-sep>Watch these UK commandos fly over the sea with new jet pack Energy regulator: Pipelines are at the forefront of our national defenses It's a boat? It's a plane? No, it's a 'seaglider.' And it goes fast...really fast Boston-based REGENT's "seaglider" is a mix between a boat and an aircraft with a top speed of 180 mph. NEW YORK, NY - JUNE 16: SVP and Director at IBM Research Arvind Krishna speaks on stage during the 2016 Wired Business Conference on June 16, 2016 in New York City. (Photo by Brian Ach/Getty Images for Wired) Viral 'Charlie bit my finger' video to be taken down. Here's why Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, center, gives his opening remarks flanked by local state delegation members prior to signing legislation that seeks to punish social media platforms that remove conservative ideas from their sites, inside Florida International University's MARC building in Miami on Monday, May 24, 2021. (Carl Juste/Miami Herald via AP) (CNN Business) — Billions of robocalls are vexing Americans — and it’s not slowing down. Many of the unsolicited calls are from scammers pretending to be tax collectors, charities, or salespeople. Short of throwing your phone in the garbage, there’s no way to avoid them altogether. But wireless providers and smartphone developers offer tools to filter out at least some unwanted calls. Not all robocalls are fake or illegal: Pharmacies and utility companies, for example, use the technique to reach customers. You can ban telemarketers by registering with the federal “Do Not Call” list — but that won’t stop fake telemarketers or scammers, many of whom have ways to get around spam filters. You can report unsolicited calls to authorities. Apps and spam filters are far from perfect, and telecom companies are hopeful new call tracing technology will improve their efforts. Smartphones Verizon’s Call Filter app is free to download on iPhones and Android devices. The company announced Thursday the app will offer some free features — including auto-blocking calls from known fraudsters, showing warning banners for suspicious calls, and a spam reporting tool. For $2.99 a month per line, the Call Filter app can use a phonebook feature to look up the names of unknown callers, and it can show a “risk meter” for spam calls. AT&T’s Call Protect has similar free features and add-ons with a $3.99 per month subscription. (iOS and Android) T-Mobile phones come loaded with Scam ID, which warns customers about suspicious phone numbers. It’s also free to activate Scam Block, which automatically rejects calls from those numbers. An additional app called Name ID offers premium caller identification for $4 per line monthly. (iOS and Android) Sprint’s Premium Caller ID, which comes pre-installed, looks up unknown numbers and filters and blocks robocalls for $2.99 per line. Google’s Pixel phones also give you the option to have your voice assistant answer suspicious calls for you. The phone can transcribe the conversation and lets you decide whether to answer. Landlines and digital phone systems There’s not much to be done for pre-1990s landlines, according to experts. But options do exist for most modern digital phone systems, which are offered by internet service providers. Home phone customers with Comcast’s Xfinity, Verizon Fios, AT&T U-Verse and others can sign up for a free service called Nomorobo. It’s a cloud-based platform that automatically screens for suspected robocallers and telemarketers. Nomorobo was one of two winners in a 2013 competition, put on by the US government, to develop anti-spam technology. The company has also rolled out a smartphone app that says it can automatically block scammers, telemarketers and spam texts. The company says the iOS app can also block incoming calls from fake numbers that look very similar to your own, thwarting a technique “neighbor spoofing,” a common tactic among pesky robocallers. Subscriptions cost $1.99 per month. (iOS and Android) Improving filters The telecom industry is putting high hopes on a new tool called STIR/SHAKEN to improve the accuracy of spam filters. It’s designed to identify and trace calls that use the “spoofing” technique, which allows spammers to mask their identities and make it look like they’re calling from somewhere else — even your own phone number. STIR/SHAKEN is the result of a major corporate collaboration. Companies will work together to verify calls across the industry, so that a person using an AT&T wireless phone, for example, can be verified when they call a Comcast landline. AT&T (T), Comcast (CMCSA) and Verizon (VZ) this month announced the first successful tests of the system. A long list of providers have pledged to implement the technology by the end of the year. (AT&T (T) owns CNN’s parent company, WarnerMedia.) It won’t solve everything. Spam filters and regulators will still rely on consumer complaints to hash out which calls are coming from legitimate sources and which come from bad actors. But it will go a long way toward gathering information on spoofed calls, which have long frustrated anti-robocall efforts, according to Jim McEachern, a senior technology consultant at telecom industry association ATIS.<doc-sep>Verizon's free answer to the robocall plague has arrived. After promising that it would roll out the features earlier this week, the company fulfilled that pledge with Call Filter, a free version of what previously was a $2.99 per month per line option. With the free version, which shares the same name as the paid service, iOS and Android users will simply need to download the proper app from the App Store or Google Play to set it up. After it is installed and opened, tap "account," "subscription status" and then "subscribe" to enroll it for your Android phone. iPhone users need to simply open the app, tap "get Call Filter" and then "tap subscribe" to set up the service for their phones. The free version of Call Filter will get you spam detection, a spam filter and the ability to report numbers. An alert will be given when the incoming call is likely to be spam. Verizon will let you determine your level of risk to help the network block calls for you automatically, sending them straight to voicemail. While it begins rolling out the free version today, Verizon says it will take about three weeks before it will become widely available. You don't need to have an unlimited plan to sign up, but it won't currently work with a Verizon prepaid plan. The service will also work with basic phones plus older BlackBerrys and Windows Phones if you still have them, though certain features will vary. To set up those devices either call Verizon, head into a store or log into your "My Verizon" account on the company's website. The $2.99 version of "Call Filter" will still exist. Those who opt to pay for it will also gain Caller ID to identify the names of unknown callers, plus the ability to create personal spam and block lists. You also get a "robocall risk meter"-- that ranks spam calls on a "high," "medium," "low" scale on your call screen based on their risk for fraud level-- and the ability to look up spam numbers. FTC drops hammer:FTC shuts down 4 groups responsible for 'billions' of calls No one is safe:AT&T CEO gets spam call alert on his Apple Watch during a live interview Verizon, which also announced Thursday that it has successfully completed a "verified calls" feature on its network that helps it determine whether a caller is legit, showing you a notification that it is verified alongside the full ten digit number. Those who want to see the name of a caller will need to pay for the Caller ID function as part of the premium Call Filter offering. The company has started deploying verification across its network and will continue doing so over the next few months. Verizon is the latest major telecom carrier to enable the verification feature, part of an industry push to fight spammers. AT&T and Comcast announced last week that they completed the first verified call between their respective digital home phone networks. T-Mobile launched call verification on its mobile network earlier this year, though it was only doing so for calls between T-Mobile customers and on a limited amount of devices as it waits for other carriers and networks roll out the feature. Follow Eli Blumenthal on Twitter @eliblumenthal<doc-sep>
Verizon is set to unveil new tools in the heightened offensive against robocalls. The nation's largest wireless provider is expected to provide free spam alerting and robocall blocking tools for wireless customers who have smartphones that can support the features, including Android and iPhones. Verizon announced the features two months ago and said it had identified nearly 300 million numbers linked to spam and robocalling. The provider is expected to have more information about how to get and use the app by the end of this week, Forbes reported. "That is our intention," Richard Young, director of corporate communications at Verizon, told USA TODAY in an email. "We could have a formal announcement by the end of the week." Last week, AT&T and Comcast said they can authenticate calls made between AT&T's Phone digital home phone service and Comcast's Xfinity Voice home phone service. The authentication method uses a "digital signature" to identify legitimate calls and filter out spoofed calls that may appear to come from familiar businesses, friends or other local callers. Robocall crackdown:FTC stops 4 groups responsible for 'billions' of calls 5G privacy:Sure, it's fast, but will 5G make your privacy more vulnerable to attack? Streaming options:Apple TV+ brings us further into age of the 'unbundle' Both AT&T and Comcast said they will roll out the system to home phone users later this year at no extra charge and AT&T said it will also bring the feature to mobile users this year. Verizon and other major wireless and traditional home voice providers – Sprint, Charter, Cox and Vonage among them – have pledged support for the verification system, with several planning to roll out or test the feature this year. T-Mobile currently offers the Caller Verified feature on six devices – Samsung Galaxy Note9, Samsung Galaxy S9 and S9+, Samsung Galaxy S10e, Galaxy S10 and Galaxy S10+ – with two more to come. T-Mobile has offered free Scam ID and Scam Block features since 2017. Verizon currently has a $2.99 monthly Caller Name ID app to warn you about incoming calls that may be spam. The Federal Communications Commission has said if carriers fail to implement the system by year's end, it will consider regulatory action. Earlier this month, John Oliver, host of the weekly show "Last Week Tonight" on HBO – acquired by AT&T in its $85 billion deal for Time Warner – criticized the FCC for not requiring companies to adopt the technology. More than 6 million have watched the segment on YouTube, in which Oliver activated his own robocalling system targeting the commission. Take action:How to stop robocalls, block numbers on your iPhone, Android and even landline Caller ID'd:If someone named 'Scam Likely' is calling you, don't pick up Not all robocalls are illegal. Charities and political campaigns can use them, for example. There's been a move to reduce some other exemptions. Last month, Senators Edward Markey, D-Massachusetts, and Mike Lee, R-Utah, along with Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-California, introduced the Help Americans Never Get Unwanted Phone calls (HANGUP) Act, which ends a provision exempting government contractors and some debt collectors from robocalls and robotexts. Despite the attention robocalls attract, the calls remain a major problem. About 4.9 billion robocalls were received nationally in February, according to YouMail, a company that provides a service to block such messages. That’s down from an all-time high of 5.2 billion robocalls in January, YouMail says. But February is a short month and that still amounts to a record 2,024 robocalls for every second of the month. Consumers are increasingly receiving spoofed calls that appear to come from legitimate customer care numbers. More than two-thirds of the calls from legitimate toll-free numbers are identified as nuisance or high-risk. And it’s not just an inconvenience: Scams make up at least 46 percent of all robocalls, YouMail says. The top scam involves health insurance, which falsely promises affordable health insurance to unknowing consumers who are willing to give up their personal or financial data. “The robocall problem shows no signs of letting up, as there continue to be more and more robocalls every day,” said YouMail CEO Alex Quilici in a statement. “This is despite regulators, carriers, and others all working hard to try to make a dent in the problem.” Robocall reaction:Enraged by endless robocalls? Help is on the way Robocall advances:Fight against robocalls continues as AT&T, Comcast complete test of verified call Follow USA TODAY reporter Mike Snider on Twitter: @MikeSnider.