LET'S ROBOCALL IT OFF: Technology and new state laws are helping consumers end unwanted phone calls.

• Author: Morton, Heather

Your phone rings. The caller II) says it's the IRS. With butterflies in your stomach, you answer the call and are told there is a problem with your tax return. To verify some information and avoid penalties, you must give your Social Security or credit card number.

Another caller mimics a family member and asks you to send a prepaid debit card for bail or some other emergency. That's followed by still another call from a number that looks familiar but turns out to be a recorded pitch for a product or service.

Then, just before you go to bed, the phone rings again. This time you're glad you answered. It's another recording, but it's from the school announcing a snow day tomorrow. There are good robocalls and there are bad ones!

According to the Federal Communications Commission, the IKS hoax has scammed 14,700 victims out of more than $72 million since October 2013, despite ongoing efforts to educate consumers about the fraud.

No one, not even NCSL staff, is immune from receiving unwanted telephone solicitations, often as robocalls using misleading caller ID. (While writing this article, I received four unwanted calls in four hours.) According to the YouMail Robocall Index, 4.5 billion robocalls were placed in September. That's more than 150 million calls a day and an average of 13.8 calls per U.S. resident. Texas, California, Florida, Georgia and New York were the top five states receiving robocalls in September.

According to Hiya, an app that helps block unwanted robocalls, the five area codes targeted the most by spammers are 214 (Dallas), 210 (San Antonio), 817 (Forth Worth, Texas), 512 (Austin, Texas) and 832 (Houston). Hiya estimates that 25.3 billion calls have been made to U.S. mobile phones in the first half of this year.

YouMail reports just over 46% of the robocalls placed in September were scams, 12% were telemarketing calls, 23% percent were alerts and reminders, and the remaining 19% were payment reminders. Although nearly half the robocalls were made with the recipient's permission, the majority were unsolicited and unwanted.

FCC Regulations Issued

The FCC has issued several declaratory rulings to address illegal robocalling. The most recent was in June to clarify that voice service providers may offer consumers features that block unwanted calls through analytics (call-blocking programs) and from numbers not in a consumer's contact list (whitelist programs).

The call-blocking clarification was meant to ensure that the...