What is STIR/SHAKEN?

The new Pallone-Thune TRACED Act is now the law of the land.

The law protects consumers from illegal robocalls by:

-Lengthening the FCC's statute of limitations for prosecuting scammers (to up for four years in some cases)

-Creating harsher penalties for scammers (up to $10,000 per call)

-Allowing the FCC to prosecute first-time offenders (previously the FCC had to give warnings before it was allowed to punish scammers)

-Requiring phone service providers to enable their customers to block robocalls for no additional charge

-Requiring phone service providers to implement the STIR/SHAKEN authentication framework

So what is the STIR/SHAKEN framework?

STIR/SHAKEN is an acronym standing for Secure Telephone Identity Revisited/Signature-based Handling of Asserted information using toKENs.

Essentially, it's a signature that allows phone service providers to verify that the caller really is who he or she claims to be.

Without the STIR/SHAKEN, scammers are able to spoof phone numbers and area codes.

For example, a scammer in California could use spoofing to make a call look like it was coming from an Evansville, IN area code when targeting consumers in the Evansville region.

Scammers can even spoof calls to look like they are coming from people consumers know personally.

With the STIR-SHAKEN framework, phone companies are able to prove to their customers whether or not callers really are who they say they are.

Click HERE for more information about the Pallone-Thune TRACED Act and HERE for more information on the STIR/SHAKEN framework.