USTelecom Vice President-Law and Policy Kevin Rupy testified...

USTelecom Vice President-Law and Policy Kevin Rupy testified before Congress Wednesday about the association’s efforts to tackle phone scams. “Our industry has ramped up a concerted, broad-based, public-private effort focused exclusively on the issue of telephony abuse,” he said in written testimony (http://1.usa.gov/1zJDj4Z) before the Senate Special Committee on Aging. “Our member companies continue to work with government and industry stakeholders to develop more secure forms of caller identification authentication to more effectively address a practice that facilitates fraud, caller-ID spoofing.” The telcos are working to offer services to cut the number of fraudulent calls, he said. Rupy also raised the challenges of robocalls. USTelecom members “will initiate legal actions against robocallers when they can be found,” he said.