SACRAMENTO – California Attorney General Xavier Becerra on Monday joined a bipartisan comment letter in support of the Federal Communications Commission’s proposed rules to improve and expand the prohibition on “caller ID spoofing.”

Scammers use this practice to manipulate caller ID information in order to fool consumers about the name and number of the party that is calling them.

The proposed rules would expand the reach of existing law to allow the FCC to combat caller ID spoofing from scammers outside the US, as well as caller ID spoofing using alternative voice and text messaging services.

The proposed rule would broaden the authority of the FCC to hold these scammers accountable and stamp out malicious caller ID spoofing.

“Calls from fake numbers are more than just a nuisance – they’re a scourge on American consumers that cause billions of dollars of harm each year,” said Attorney General Becerra. “We should be doing everything in our power to eliminate these types of calls and texts, which far too often lead to identity theft and financial loss. Consumers and their personal information continue to be at risk. We support updates to federal law that will allow enforcement against scams originating from outside the U.S. and scams that use text messaging.”

In the letter, the bipartisan group of 42 attorneys general encourage the Commission to adopt the rules and offer support for enforcement.

The coalition points to the increased number of robocall scams: of the 47.8 billion robocalls made in the US in 2018, 17.7 billion of the calls were reported to be scams resulting in consumer losses of $488 million.

In the letter, the coalition also encourages the FCC to adopt and implement new technology solutions to prevent and block these robocalls from occurring.

In filing the letter, Attorney General Becerra joins the Attorneys General of Pennsylvania, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, and West Virginia.

A copy of the letter is available here.