Security News > 2023 > May > FTC sues VoIP provider over 'billions of illegal robocalls'

A VoIP provider was at the heart of billions of robocalls made over the past five years that broke a slew of US regulations, from enabling telemarketing scams to calling numbers on the National Do Not Call Registry, it is claimed.

Los-Angeles-based XCast Labs allowed robocalls from telemarketers to flow through its voice-over-IP network to folks despite multiple warnings over several years that many of the calls ran afoul of the America's Telemarketing Sales Rule, the FTC alleged in a 13-page complaint [PDF] filed May 12 in a California federal court.

Telemarketers "Typically use VoIP service providers to transmit those calls," the FTC said in its complaint this month.

In January 2020, the FTC notified several VoIP providers - including XCast - warning them that the calls they were transmitting violated laws.

Not only did it ignore regulators' warnings - and continued to work with telemarketers it was warned about - but its call data records gave the FTC data it needed, such as the date and time of calls, the numbers the calls were coming from and going to, and the duration of calls.

Given its experience as a VoIP provider, repeated warnings, and data in its own records, "XCast knew or consciously avoided knowing that providers were using XCast's services to transmit calls that violated the TSR," the FTC said in the lawsuit.

News URL

https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2023/05/16/ftc_xcast_illegal_robocalls/