Rage Against the Machine: Reducing Robocall Abuse to Protect At-Risk Consumers

For most people, robocalls are nothing more than an annoying side-effect of owning a cell phone today. But a successful robocall scheme is still capable of wreaking financial and psychological havoc on its victims. Senior citizens and cognitively impaired individuals are often targeted by fraudulent phone calls or texts because they may have trouble understanding how to identify and protect themselves from robocall abuse. This Note proposes a collaborative solution to this problem by calling on the judiciary and legislatures to minimize the amount of robocalls received by American telephone consumers. By adopting a broader understanding of the law and enacting stricter regulatory measures concerning automated calls and text messages, this Note theorizes that the unfair impact of robocalls on these targeted communities would decrease. After all, robocalls are a favorite tool used to illegally defraud unwitting recipients, many of whom are elderly or cognitively harmed. Rather than tasking telephone consumers with protecting themselves from phone fraud, the government should take responsibility and stop robocallers from evading the law in the first place