Phone companies must now block robocalls from numbers that should not exist

The US communications regulator has made rules requiring phone companies to block robocalls from numbers that are clearly fake. This means phone companies must now use a list of "do-not-originate" numbers to stop calls before they reach people.

For years, robocallers have used fake or invalid phone numbers to make it harder to trace them. This rule forces phone companies to act as a first line of defense, stopping these calls before they even enter the network. It shifts the burden of identifying and blocking these calls from individual consumers to the companies that carry the calls.