Washington, D.C. — The National Association of Attorneys General (NAAG) today called on the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to increase obligations on telemarketers by requiring them to keep additional records about their activities so that law enforcement can hold them accountable for when they fail to comply with the law.
The Telemarketing Sales Rule went into effect in 1995 to help prevent telemarketers from scamming, harassing, or threatening people. Over the past 25 years, the FTC has updated the Rule to address the rise in unwanted calls and scam calls, but the Rule has not been updated to account for the additional records that are now often necessary to help ensure telemarketers are playing by the rules. The old recordkeeping requirements are not enough to enable law enforcement to go after many bad actors.
Forty-three attorneys general are encouraging the FTC to adopt proposed changes to the Rule, including requiring telemarketers and sellers to keep the following types of information:
- A copy of each unique prerecorded message.
- Call detail records of telemarketing campaigns.
- Records that prove a seller has an established business relationship with a consumer.
- Records that prove a consumer is a previous donor to a particular charitable organization.
- Records of the service providers that a telemarketer uses to deliver outbound calls.
- Records of a seller or charitable organization’s entity-specific do-not-call registries.
- Records of the FTC’s Do-Not-Call registry that were used to ensure compliance with the Telemarketing Sales Rule.
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