NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — Tennessee's Attorney General Herbert H. Slatery is joining the fight against something that annoys many of us – robocalls.
Attorneys general in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and three U.S. territories are backing the TRACED Act, which allow consumers to opt out of robocalls.
Additionally, it would ban more kinds of robocalls, require providers to verify that incoming calls are legitimate before they reach our phones and lengthen the statute of limitations when it comes to punishing violators.
The legislation is sponsored by Senators John Thune and Ed Markey.
According to a letter signed by the attorneys general, there were approximately 48 billion illegal robocalls made in 2018.
That means if every person in the country had a phone, we would all have received 147 calls last year. Because not everyone does, it's likely we individually got more than that.
Robocalls were the number one source of consumer complaints to the FTC and the FCC last year and resulted in millions in consumer losses.
