In this day and age, we would expect fewer people to fall into fraudulent scams over the phone, considering our growing knowledge of security and privacy. However, America loses approximately $10 billion annually to robocall schemes, so the US government has decided to ramp up its efforts against call spoofing. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) issued a notice that by June 30, 2021, all phone companies are to adopt a caller ID authentication technology called STIR/SHAKEN.

STIR stands for Secure Telephone Identity Revisited, while SHAKEN is an abbreviation for Signature-based Handling of Asserted Information Using toKENs. The technology necessitates a caller ID signature, issued by the call’s originating carrier, which is later validated by other carriers before the call is completed. Therefore, carriers verify if the caller ID data, transmitted with the call, matches the caller’s phone number and can better identify spoofed calls before they reach the subscribers.

According to the announcement, the estimated benefit from the policy will exceed $3 billion annually. The new technology will also restore subscribers’ trust in the caller ID on their display and therefore encourage people to answer their phone more.