West Virginia Attorney General JB McCuskey has joined a bipartisan group of 48 attorneys general urging the Federal Communications Commission to tighten its Know Your Upstream Provider requirements, arguing stronger oversight is needed to curb illegal robocalls that continue to flood U.S. phone networks.
McCuskey said enhanced KYUP rules would force voice service providers to verify that the companies routing calls are legitimate, preventing scammers from reaching consumers. “Strengthening the FCC’s Know Your Upstream Provider rules puts the responsibility of verifying that providers are real and legitimate on voice service suppliers – stopping scammers before they have a chance to rip off hard working West Virginians,” he said.
The push comes as Americans received more than 29.6 billion scam robocalls and texts last year, costing victims nearly $2 billion. Attorneys general want the FCC to require more frequent monitoring of upstream providers and expand scrutiny within STIR/SHAKEN, the caller ID authentication framework designed to stop spoofed numbers.
McCuskey is part of the Anti Robocall Multistate Litigation Task Force, which recently pressured smaller providers to fix compliance issues. The FCC has since ordered six companies to correct violations or risk losing access to the U.S. network.
