Attorney General Dave Sunday and 48 other attorneys general called on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Thursday to strengthen rules that would cut off scammers’ access to legitimate telephone numbers.
Americans received nearly 30 billion scam robocalls and text messages in 2025, according to Sunday’s office. Scammers use real phone numbers for “spoofing” in efforts to appear legitimate when targeting people for robocalls.
Sunday is part of the Anti-Robocall Multistate Litigation Task Force, which initially engaged with the FCC in 2021 to combat robocalls and collaborate on proposed rules.
“Robocalls are more than just a nuisance — they are often a means to perpetrate a scam and when they involve legitimate phone number ‘spoofs,’ they are more effective in achieving their mission of duping Pennsylvanians,” Sunday said. “We are asking the feds to cut off scammers’ access to real phone numbers, which they often buy in droves.”
As part of the related and ongoing “Operation Robocall Roundup,” Sunday and the national coalition previously sent warning letters to major phone service providers. These letters urged providers to stop allowing illegal robocalls to reach consumers.
Scammers previously relied primarily on illegal “spoofing” of other people’s phone numbers to impersonate legitimate entities. However, federal government and state attorneys general’s actions have made illegal spoofing more difficult. Scammers now often purchase legitimate phone numbers and use them for robocalls.
Legitimate businesses typically use the same phone number for many years. In contrast, scammers cycle through millions of brand-new phone numbers to avoid detection by spam filters. In one North Carolina case, Sunday’s office said, scammers made more than 17.3 million calls in a single day through one phone company. They generally did not use the same number more than twice for these calls, a common tactic among scammers.
The bipartisan attorneys general are asking the federal government to implement several new measures. They propose requiring every company authorized to purchase and resell phone numbers in North America to meet stronger certification rules. These companies would also need to share information on how and to whom they are assigning numbers.
Another request is for these companies to submit regular reports on the sale and use of numbers. This would allow law enforcement to trace illegal robocalls back to their source. The reports would also help hold all companies in the call path accountable for selling or transmitting numbers used to conduct illegal robocalls.
The attorneys general also seek to require people and entities applying for access to phone numbers to confirm they will not use them to make illegal robocalls.
They also want to block the sale of phone numbers to entities not tied to a calling or texting service. Robocallers often buy numbers without linking them to a legitimate phone service, as they do not plan to use them for legitimate calling and texting purposes.
Additional proposed rules include prohibiting number cycling. This tactic involves entities buying numerous numbers and using them on a rotating, sometimes single-use basis, to avoid detection by tools that flag illegal robocalls.
Restricting the offering of trial numbers is also sought to discourage scammers from exploiting them to harm consumers.
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