South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley has joined 49 other Attorneys General in pushing the Federal Communications Commission to strengthen its “Know Your Customer” rules to help prevent scammers from using the U.S. communications network to make illegal robocalls.
“This is an ongoing effort by Attorneys General to convince the FCC to be more diligent in combating robocall scams,” said Attorney General Jackley. “Attorneys General see what such scams are doing to citizens in their states, and the federal government needs to do more.”
Last year, Americans received more than 29.6 billion scam robocalls and texts and lost nearly $2 billion to these scams.
The KYC rules require phone companies to know who is making calls through their networks and what kinds of business these customers are conducting. With that information, phone companies can suspend or terminate callers who use their networks to make unlawful calls or decline to do business with customers who aren’t legitimate companies or can’t prove that they conduct lawful business.
In addition to what the FCC is already doing, attorneys general urge the FCC to:
- Require providers to understand their customers’ business. In addition to verifying a customer’s identity and existence, originating providers should also be required to examine and understand the customer’s business practices, reputation, history, intended use of services, and their compliance with state and federal laws.
- Hold all originating providers to KYC standards. Even small originating service providers should be required to meet enhanced KYC standards. Scammers use originating providers, regardless of size, to access the communications network. In fact, illegal calls are often facilitated by smaller voice service providers. Not holding small providers to the same standards could cause them to be even more attractive to bad actors looking to use them to make illegal robocalls.
- Require originating providers to collect additional information on high-risk customers. While KYC requirements should be universal, the attorneys general support additional, long-term monitoring of customers who are more likely to make illegal robocalls, such as those subscribing to high volume services.
This letter comes after Attorney General Jackley and a coalition of 48 other Attorneys General sent reply comments to the FCC earlier in July, encouraging it to crackdown on illegal robocalls by strengthening rules that would cut off scammers’ access to legitimate phone numbers.
The two letters are part of Phase 2 of Operation Robocall Roundup, an effort by the Anti-Robocall Multistate Litigation Task Force to crack down on robocalls across the country. Phase 1 launched in August 2025 with warning letters sent to 37 smaller voice providers that were allowing suspected illegal robocalls onto the U.S. telephone network. Phase 2 launched in December and expanded the crackdown to four of the largest intermediate voice service providers in the country.