Brantley Telephone Company, Inc. is committed to blocking illegal robocalls that originate from our network. It is against Federal telecom regulations and Brantley Telephone Company, Inc. policy to falsify caller ID (spoof) for fraudulent purposes when using your assigned phone number or other phone numbers assigned to Brantley Telephone Company, Inc. or to make unsolicited telemarketing or illicit calls. Furthermore, it is unlawful to use Brantley Telephone Company, Inc. voice service to engage in auto-dialing, illegal spoofing, to originate robocall calls with the intent to defraud, cause harm or wrongly obtain anything of value from the recipient of the call. Violations of these terms of voice service use can/may result in suspension or termination of your voice telephone service.
What are Robocalls and Spoofing?
Robocalls: Automated phone calls with prerecorded or artificial voice messages. Many are legal and just simply unwanted calls while others can be illegal as the sole intent is to defraud a party of money.
Spoofing: When a caller deliberately falsifies the information transmitted to your caller ID display to disguise their identity.
- Spoofing is not always illegal. There are legitimate, legal uses for spoofing. For example, a doctor calls a patient from her personal mobile phone and displays the office number rather than the personal phone number or a business displays its toll-free call-back number.
- Spoofing is illegal when the caller falsifies the caller ID display information to disguise their identity with the intent to defraud, cause harm or wrongly obtain anything of value. Fraudulent Calls: Calls originating from invalid, unallocated, and unassigned telephone numbers, as well as calls originating from inbound-only numbers that should never make outbound calls.
Fraudulent Calls: Calls originating from invalid, unallocated and unassigned telephone numbers, as well as calls originating from inbound-only numbers that should never make outbound calls.
Legal Robocalls
| Type |
Description |
Political Calls |
Usually made without permission |
Surveys |
A mass communications technique that sends a pre-recorded phone message to hundreds or thousands of call recipients at once to conduct surveys. |
Flight Cancellations |
Purely infomational for you! |
Appointment Reminders |
Purely infomational for you! |
Delayed School Openings |
Purely infomational for you! |
Calls From Health Care Providers |
This includes a robocall from a pharmacy reminding you to refill/pick up a prescription. Consumers consent to receive these calls. |
Debt Collection Calls |
A business contacting you to collect a debt can use robocalls to reach you. Robocalls that try to sell you services to reduce your debt are illegal and are almost certainly scams. |
Charities Asking for Donations |
Charities can make these calls themselves. But if a charity hires someone to make robocalls on its behalf, the robocalls can only go to members of the charity or prior donors. They also must include an automated option to let you stop future calls |
What’s Next?
For more information on robocalls and spoofing visit FCC’s guide to stopping unwanted robocalls.
