FCC says carriers should better protect phone users, plans new regulation

AppleInsider

The FCC is planning to introduce a new requirement for phone carriers to combat scams involving SIM-swapping and porting users' accounts to criminals.

FCC

The Federal Communications Commission has begun what it describes as a "formal rulemaking process," which aims to help phone users. It's specifically intended to make SIM-swapping, where a legitimate user's service is fraudulently switched to someone else.

And it's also intended to counter the similar port-out scam, where one carrier is used to port a user's number from another carrier.

"The FCC has received numerous complaints from consumers who have suffered significant distress, inconvenience, and financial harm as a result of SIM swapping and port-out fraud," says the commission in a statement. "In addition, recent data breaches have exposed customer information that could potentially make it easier to pull off these kinds of attacks."

This Notice of Proposed Rulemaking says that the FCC plans to amend the Customer Proprietary Network Information (CPNI) and Local Number Portability rules. Carriers will ultimately be required to adopt more secure authentication methods, and also to notify customers of SIM or port changes.

There is no timetable for when the FCC hopes to implement the new rules. The notice does, though, say that the Commission "seeks input" on the issues.

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rob53

This would be a first if the FCC actually protected any consumer. 

j2fusion

How about fining the carriers $1 for every faked caller ID it lets through. I’d rather see no number available than a fake one. 

flydog

rob53 said:

This would be a first if the FCC actually protected any consumer. 

You must be high. 

flydog

j2fusion said:

How about fining the carriers $1 for every faked caller ID it lets through. I’d rather see no number available than a fake one. 

Why would that merit a fine?  There’s nothing illegal about that, and there never will be. When Apple customer support returns your call, that number is the inbound number, not the actual number of the person who is calling you. 

williamlondon

flydog said:

j2fusion said:

How about fining the carriers $1 for every faked caller ID it lets through. I’d rather see no number available than a fake one. 

When Apple customer support returns your call, that number is the inbound number, not the actual number of the person who is calling you. 

Yeah, because that's the same thing.

mplsp

j2fusion said:

How about fining the carriers $1 for every faked caller ID it lets through. I’d rather see no number available than a fake one. 

The problem is the telephone network needs to be redesigned to have more security. Until that happens the carriers can only try to limit the onslaught. It’s much like email that way.