Lawmakers have previously tried and failed to stop robocalls, most prominently with the opening of the National Do Not Call Registry about 15 years ago. (Criminals ignore the list of off-limits numbers.) Implementing this latest anti-robocall law is likely to take years, telecom industry executives and robocall experts say. New consumer-protection rules will take months to craft and longer to implement. Lawmakers also left aspects of the problem for future study, calling for eight new reports and two new working groups. Some of the billions of robocalls Americans receive are legitimate, such as calls from a pharmacy telling a customer a prescription is ready. The calls are illegal when used for scams, or when they violate consumer-protection rules such as those against calling someone without their permission using a recorded message.
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