JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 Spam calls are a major annoyance, and scammers have gotten extra tricky and have begun shielding their numbers.<\/p>\n
But a bill that cleared its first committee stop in the Florida Senate Wednesday morning would put the onus on phone providers to block those deceptive calls on the front end.<\/p>\n
The push comes at a time when losses due to scams are seeing a massive spike.<\/p>\n
>>> STREAM ACTION NEWS JAX LIVE <<<<\/b><\/a><\/p>\n In 2020, older adults lost a combined $55 million.<\/p>\n Four years later, those annual losses skyrocketed to $445 million.<\/p>\n Jacksonville residents we spoke with told us their experience with spam calls feels never-ending.<\/p>\n \u201cIn the past 24 hours\u2026 Twelve,” said Jon Marks.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s so many I have no idea how many I get,\u201d said Sherry Magill.<\/p>\n To avoid built-in spam call blockers and current Florida call blocking laws, some scammers have started spoofing their caller ID info.<\/p>\n But State Senator Ileana Garcia (R-Miami) is sponsoring legislation that aims to catch the state up.<\/p>\n \u201cWe want to get ahead of this very advanced AI digital age where basically they are circumventing everything we currently have in place,\u201d said Garcia during the bill\u2019s first committee stop Wednesday.<\/p>\n Garcia\u2019s bill would require phone companies to implement technologies that could identify and automatically block calls and texts if the caller ID info has been manipulated.<\/p>\n Karen Murillo with AARP Florida explained those spoofed calls can be especially deceptive, as scammers can make it look like they\u2019re calling from a local number or even an official agency.<\/p>\n \u201cWhere it looks like it\u2019s coming from the courthouse or local law enforcement saying that you\u2019ve got a warrant out for your arrest, or it may be something like an Amazon delivery scam,\u201d said Murillo.<\/p>\n The bill comes with some sharp teeth as well, with phone companies that fail to comply threatened with a $250,000 fine.<\/p>\n \u201cThe technology absolutely exists. It is provably effective. It just is a matter of making sure that all of the networks are using this efficiently and consistently,\u201d said Murillo.<\/p>\n And spam call victims we heard from say they\u2019ll take any help they can get.<\/p>\n \u201cThe dozens of spam calls I get daily, if it saved me ten of those a day, it would definitely save some frustration,\u201d said Marks.<\/p>\n The bill still has two more committee stops in the House and Senate.<\/p>\n If passed, phone providers would need to implement the spoof call tech by July 1st of 2027.<\/p>\n [DOWNLOAD: <\/b>Free Action News Jax app for alerts as news breaks<\/b><\/a>]<\/b><\/p>\n [SIGN UP: <\/b>Action News Jax Daily Headlines Newsletter<\/b><\/a>] <\/b><\/p>\n Click here<\/b><\/a> to download the free Action News Jax news and weather apps, <\/b>click here<\/b><\/a> to download the Action News Jax Now app for your smart TV and <\/b>click here<\/b><\/a> to stream Action News Jax live.<\/b><\/p>\n Action News Jax Top Stories<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2014 Spam calls are a major annoyance, and scammers have gotten extra tricky and have begun…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":591902,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5136],"tags":[255788,12189,2431,5229,9331,3188,723,223902,2323,255786,11561,7310,3005,240795,48908,255787,425,16854,86405,57513,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":["post-591901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-aarp_florida","tag-action_news","tag-amazon","tag-america","tag-americans","tag-fl","tag-florida","tag-florida_house","tag-garcia","tag-iliana_garcia","tag-jack","tag-jacksonville","tag-jake","tag-jake_s_stan","tag-jake_stoan","tag-karen_murillo","tag-local","tag-senate","tag-senator","tag-tanika","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116075118371378725","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=591901"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591901\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/591902"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=591901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=591901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=591901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}