An anonymous phone call may soon be a relic. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has proposed requiring a host of personal information in order to enable someone’s phone service. While the new rules are an effort to stomp out pesky robocalls, they may cause more harm than peace.
Caller ID
The FCC 26-27 proposal, adopted on April 30, was deemed a “know-your-customer” standard with the intention of “stopping illegal calls before they enter the phone network, requiring providers to block unwanted or illegal calls and giving consumers more information about the calls they receive,” said the FCC in a news release. Part of the proposal is for phone providers to “verify customer identities — including name, address, government ID and alternative phone numbers — before enabling service.” It sounds good on paper, but many are concerned about this measure’s breach of privacy.
The proposal is “misguided and counterproductive,” Sydney Saubestre, a senior policy analyst on the Privacy and Data Project at the Center for Democracy and Technology, said to Fortune. It is a “mandate that would deny access to the most vulnerable, strip anonymity from those who need it most and do little to stop the sophisticated scam operations it claims to target.” This removal of anonymity would essentially put an end to prepaid cellphones and burner phones.
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Besides removing access to private telecommunications, the new proposal would do “little to combat scams and robocalls, since most people doing that will have no trouble creating fake documentation or identities,” Cooper Quintin, a security researcher and senior public interest technologist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said to 404 Media. “Given this administration’s crackdown on free expression, protest, immigrants and women’s health,” they “want to take away our ability to make an anonymous phone call.”
Wrong number
While burner phones are often associated with crimes like espionage and fraud, there are plenty of nonnefarious reasons someone may want one. A lack of access to private telecommunications can cause “especially acute harm and danger for survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, technology-facilitated abuse and stalking,” the Kansas Coalition Against Sexual & Domestic Violence said in a letter to the FCC. Also requiring government-issued IDs is a barrier for many to obtain a phone.
As of 2024, close to 21 million voting-age U.S. citizens do not have a current driver’s license, according to the Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement at the University of Maryland. Black and Hispanic Americans are also disproportionately less likely to have one. An address requirement would prevent those who are unhoused from being able to purchase and operate a cell phone.
Many also have concerns about how phone providers will handle user data. “Every other year, there’s a new data breach in which 70 million, 100 million U.S. consumers have their data exposed,” Chao Jun Liu, a senior legislative associate at the nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation, said to CNET. “These are the people that we are trusting to collect and hold and retain information.” Those in favor of the proposal, like banking industry groups, have cited “fraud and scam losses that totaled nearly $200 billion in 2024,” said Fortune, arguing that the “financial sector already spends billions annually fighting it.”
