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US legislation severely punishes robot harassing phone calls

Technological progress will also bring trouble, such as harassing phone calls that make everyone feel headache. Recently, the U.S. Senate voted to pass a bill to severely punish 'harassing calls made by robots', with a fine of up to $10000 per call. The bill has been sent to us president trump for signature before implementation.

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The so-called 'robot harassment calls' refer to those calls that are automatically dialed by the computer according to the preset program and played after being connected. The data show that in 2019, the total number of 'robot harassment calls' received by people in the United States exceeded 50 billion, which means that 167 million' robot harassment calls' are dialed every day, that is, an average American receives 15 'robot harassment calls' every month. Among them, Texas, California and Florida are the 'hardest hit areas' of such calls.

According to the new bill passed by the Senate, the maximum fine for "robot harassing phone" in the United States will jump from the current $1500 to $10000, about 70000 yuan. At the same time, the bill also expands the time limit of punishment from one year to three years, hoping to give law enforcement departments more time to implement.

For those responsible for causing 'robot harassment calls', the bill plans to force the identity authentication of voice message callers. In the past, only users of smart phone systems such as Apple could download the 'blocking applet' from the app store to complete this step. Users who use non smart phones cannot effectively filter and intercept. The new bill hopes to solve this problem from the source, requiring U.S. telecom operators to update their systems within 18 months and strengthen the screening of customers who set up voice information.