NY Bills Aim to Increase Robocall and Spam Protections

Recently, New York Governor Kathy Hochul signed a pair of bills (S.6267a/A.268a and S.4281a/A.585a) requiring telecommunication providers to enhance their abilities to validate incoming calls and block robocalls.  This legislation allows the state to implement authentication protocol to prevent the illegal “spoofing” of phone numbers and empowers the state government to take enforcement actions against bad actors.

Bill S.6267a/A.268a, requires telecom providers to proactively block calls coming from suspicious sources, including numbers that cannot make outbound calls.  While S.4281a/A.585a empowers the state to ensure that voice service providers are utilizing the STIR/SHAKEN framework adopted by the FCC.  Officially known as Secure Telephony Identity Revisited and Signature-based Handling of Asserted Information Using toKENs, the STIR/SHAKEN framework requires that telephone service providers obtain a digital certificate for individual telephone numbers to validate that the call is coming from the purported number.  Ultimately, these measures are designed to prevent bad actors from spoofing numbers and to allow for illegal calls to more easily be traced to their origins.

Both laws took effect on November 8, 2021.