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A policy about robocalls that Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares proposed earlier this year has been agreed to by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The policy requires individual businesses to obtain written consent from consumers before sending robotexts and making robocalls. 

Under the prior rule, lead generating businesses misled consumers who believed they were consenting to a single company’s telecommunications, only to receive, sometimes, hundreds of unwanted calls and text messages from industry competitors. The FCC’s new rule requires “one-to-one consent,” which prevents lead generators from obtaining consent on behalf of multiple businesses or sellers. 

So what are robocalls? We’ve all encountered them at one time or another. These are phone calls that use a computerized autodialer to deliver a pre-recorded message, as if from a robot. Robocalls are mainly associated with political and telemarketing phone campaigns.

“Virginians are sick and tired of the seemingly endless robocalls-and-texts. I’m glad that the FCC accepted my recommendation and drawn a clear line in the sand by adopting the one-to-one consent rule to protect consumers from lead generating businesses’ predatory practices,” said Attorney General Miyares. “This bipartisan effort and subsequent rule change will result in less unwanted and harassing telemarketing calls, and bring more peace to Virginians.” 

A common lead generation practice is to offer to give the consumer a quote for a good or service online such as insurance products. In order to receive the quote, a consumer has to agree to receive calls and/or texts from the lead generator’s marketing partners. This often includes thousands of different businesses offering numerous different goods or services. Businesses are identified usually on a separate webpage only accessible via a hyperlink rather than listed outright.