Phone companies are getting one year to implement newly-mandated call blocking measures meant to filter out nuisance calls and scammers. The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) says universal network-level call blocking is the most effective and efficient way to weed out people who are using "blatantly illegitimate" caller ID or spoofing. Several telecoms expressed concerns about technical challenges to call blocking, about scammers moving to other, harder-to-detect measures and the potential that phone providers might block legitimate calls people actually wanted to receive. In response, the CRTC says it is laying out "a multi-pronged approach to fight nuisance calls," starting with the universal network-level call blocking. It says other countries, including the United Kingdom, have already introduced this requirement to block calls that have invalid identification data.

Source: CBC News December 28, 2018 22:35 UTC