Staggering figures: 15 billion phone calls in a year for a turnover worth at least three billion euros. These are the telemarketing numbers in Italy on which from Wednesday there will be a new crackdown to limit the countless unwanted calls that afflict practically all citizens with a telephone.
In fact, the ban on commercial calls from fake Italian mobile numbers comes into force on 19 November. An innovation that follows the one introduced last August 19th, when Agcom made operational a first anti-spoofing block relating to fake Italian fixed numbers.
Specifically, starting from November 19th, calls coming from abroad using an Italian mobile number will undergo an immediate technical check that will allow us to understand if that number really exists, to whom it is assigned and where it is located. In fact, the system will ascertain both which operator the calling number belongs to, through the national portability database, and the actual position of that numbering, i.e. whether the call legitimately comes from roaming abroad or whether the number has been falsified. Calls that do not pass these checks will be automatically blocked.
Last November 6, then, Agcom passed a resolution which on the one hand broadens the scope of intervention by including in the block which will come into effect on Wednesday the numbers relating to specialized mobile and personal services, such as satellite ones or dedicated to communication services between so-called machine-to-machine devices, and on the other hand provides for the blocking of calls coming from abroad for those mobile operators who have not implemented the measures (envisaged by resolution no. 106/25/CONS) which allow for the verification if the calling number corresponds to a user actually roaming internationally. As a consequence of this block, the roaming service abroad offered by these operators will be suspended, for calls destined for Italy, until the envisaged measures are implemented.
Despite the new measures, however, we must not have false expectations, even if the number of harassing phone calls that manage to circumvent the controls should be significantly reduced, Codacons warns consumers: “from Wednesday – states the consumer association – unwanted calls will decrease, but will not disappear completely”. “Calls coming from legal call centers operating from Italy, those coming from abroad with non-Italian numbers, those using fake Italian numbers but which actually start from the national territory, and telephone calls from actually existing foreign landlines. Finally, the countermeasures that will be adopted by illegal call centers must be considered, which use increasingly sophisticated technologies to circumvent blocks and bans and target users.”
In the electricity and gas sector alone, it is estimated that fraudulent commercial calls and contracts placed with users through aggressive practices lead victims to spend on average between +10% and +20% on bills compared to normal market rates, with an overall damage estimated at around 2 billion euros per year.