Law Enforcement Groups Partnering With YouMail To Shut Down Robocallers

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Apr 27, 2022, 09:00 ET

YouMail Teams Up with Attorneys General in Michigan and North Carolina to Fight Robocalls

IRVINE, Calif., April 27, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- YouMail today announced that it was teaming up with state Attorneys General in Michigan and North Carolina to fight the nation's complex robocall problem on behalf of all Americans.

Federal regulators and law enforcement officials recognize that illegal robocalling campaigns are the product of public policies that have opened the U.S. telecom infrastructure to criminal behavior, often hosted by U.S. intermediate providers. Shutting down these campaigns requires identifying these illegal calls, identifying the providers where the calls originate or are brought on to the US telecom network, and then identifying the customers of those carriers responsible for originating those phone calls.

YouMail's large and engaged user base is critical to the fight against illegal robocalls, because illegal and unlawful calls placed to YouMail users are automatically detected and provided to law enforcement.

YouMail has historically served in a crucial technical role for US Telecom's Industry Traceback Group, or ITG. YouMail has provided examples of the most pervasive illegal robocall calls to its users, which can then be traced back to the source carriers and customers, often in hours, helping quickly identify the sources of illegal calls. As of April 2022, a majority of states across the country had executed agreements with the Federal Communications Commission to make sharing information about robocall investigations between the states and the FCC more efficient and effective.

Recently, YouMail has begun working closely with officials from multiple state Offices of Attorney General and several federal agencies to fight back – including the Federal Communications Commission and Federal Trade Commission and the AGs of North Carolina and Michigan.

For instance, in January, North Carolina AG Josh Stein filed a lawsuit against Articul8, a Texas-based telecommunications firm. Articul8 was charged with helping scammers place tens of millions of illegal robocalls to North Carolinians. The lawsuit credited YouMail with providing the call transcripts and records from known fraudulent robocall campaigns to North Carolina area codes, including a fake Social Security Administration arrest warrant scam, and a ubiquitous auto warranty scam, among others.

"I'm proud that North Carolina is leading national efforts to shut down robocallers. Right now, we're going after the gateway phone companies that enable these illegal international robocalls," Stein said. "We're able to take this innovative action in part because YouMail has provided critical data and analysis. YouMail's work on illegal robocalls is helping us fight to bring back peace of mind for Americans."

In addition, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel has cracked down on robocalls by working with state and federal partners since 2019.

"We appreciate this newly forged partnership with YouMail, which will greatly assist our efforts to combat these nuisance and illegal calls," Nessel said. "Protecting consumers remains one of my top priorities as Michigan Attorney General and YouMail's traceback technology aides us in that work."

"It's great to see the AGs work so hard on addressing the problem of illegal robocalls, and YouMail is pleased to assist those efforts," said Alex Quilici, CEO of YouMail. "Anyone who wants to be a part of the robocall fight now need only download and run the YouMail app, and YouMail will not only block calls to them but illegal calls to them will automatically become part of the body of evidence available to support officials working to shut those calls down. As a society, we all share this problem together, so we all need to be a part of the solution."

All of this means that consumers who simply sign up and use YouMail help prevent robocalls across the entire U.S., even for non-YouMail users, as they help law enforcement gather the data needed to put these robocallers out of business. In fact, the various enforcement efforts have used YouMail's calling records to help shut down robocalling campaigns totaling in the many billions of robocalls.

YouMail's contributions also stem in part from its robocall blocking app and the YouMail Robocall Index, which is widely recognized as the country's premier source of public information and education about illegal robocalls. In addition, YouMail has recently increased security services to help protect telecom carriers, service providers, and enterprise brands through the analysis of its call traffic patterns.

About YouMail, Inc.
YouMail protects consumers, enterprises, and carriers from harmful phone calls. YouMail protects consumers with app-based call protection services in the US and the UK, with the YouMail, Another Number, and Hullo Mail apps. YouMail protects consumer-facing enterprises by detecting and helping to shut down imposter traffic that can lead to financial or brand damage. We protect carriers with robocall mitigation services that detect when bad traffic is originating, traversing, or terminating on their networks. Our direct consumer solutions answer over a billion live calls per year across well over 10 million registered users, powering America's most robust telephone sensor network in identifying and providing zero-hour protection against illegal calling campaigns and cyberattacks. We also operate the YouMail Robocall Index™, the nation's definitive source on telephone network activity and attacks. YouMail, Inc. is privately funded and based in Irvine, California.

Contact:
Rohan Notaney for YouMail
Lumina Communications
[email protected]

SOURCE YouMail Inc.