FTC changes its telemarketing rules to cover growing ‘tech support scam’ calls

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has finalized amendments to its Telemarketing Sales Rule (TSR), making it easier to protect consumers who are tricked into paying scam tech support companies. The FTC could already spell aft these fraudster companies if they initiated calls to group — now, they tin do the aforesaid point if group telephone the scammers too.

Fake tech support fraud has been connected the emergence for galore years. The “company” tricks group into reasoning they person a microorganism aliases different problem by sending scam emails, popups, and different messages. This encourages them to telephone to a thief desk, which past convinces them to salary up.

The FTC has agelong attempted to wrangle money backmost from these scammers. But arsenic it explains successful a published proposal, a 2021 Supreme Court ruling called AMG Capital Management, LLC v. FTC constricted its authority to do so. Without a rewrite of the rules, that meant the FTC could only prosecute companies erstwhile they’d made an outbound call, leaving galore consumers who were tricked by the messages retired of luck.

Now, the TSR has been changed to region “technical support services” from a database of services that are exempt from its rules. The FTC has besides been cracking down connected scammy “tech support” pop-ups connected sites.

The FTC says older consumers complete the property of 60 were 5 times much apt to beryllium victims of these scams, and they person collectively reported much than $175 cardinal successful losses. Earlier this year, the FTC reported clone “Geek Squad” calls topped the database of fraud, adding up to $15 cardinal successful losses.