Statewide Iowa (Radio Iowa) — Have you been getting those annoying telemarketer calls? Your Caller ID says it’s from an area number, so you go ahead and pick up, only to be barraged by a recorded telemarketing message? Then, when you try and call the number back, it most often registers as a line no longer in service? Some on the KIWA staff have been receiving up to four of these calls each day from telemarketers “spoofing” the number that appears on your Caller ID. Those calls are annoying, and now one Iowa legislator has become fed up with the situation.
Iowa Senator Ken Rozenboom says he’s received one of those calls once too often.
Rozenboom got a call with a 641 area code and a 295 prefix, indicating it was a call from someone in his hometown of Oskaloosa.
It’s against the federal “Truth in Caller ID Act” to make such misrepresentations, but the practice is widespread and is now known as spoofing. Rozenboom is sponsoring legislation that makes it a crime to use “false or misleading” numbers when making calls to Iowans. Rozenboom says officials in the Iowa attorney general’s office have told him it could be another legal tool for going after telemarketers preying on — and annoying — Iowans.
If the bill becomes law, the fine would be $40-thousand PER call. The bill cleared an Iowa Senate subcommittee Thursday. Rozenboom says as he walked out of that subcommittee meeting, his cell phone rang. It was another one of THOSE calls.
