Instead of worrying about the negative impact of AI, empower yourself by harnessing AI to Take Back Your Phone.

Data Brokers Profit From Your Personal Information

• Massive identity theft risk. Data brokers aggregate so much of your personal information that they become prime targets for hackers. A congressional investigation found that just four data broker breaches cost American consumers over $20 billion in identity theft losses.
• Physical safety and stalking. They assemble detailed dossiers on your whereabouts and family members — information that can be easily accessed by bad actors. These databases function as a public directory for stalkers, scammers, and abusers trying to track down victims.
• Exploitation of vulnerable people. Brokers sell highly targeted lists — including people with specific medical conditions, known impulse buyers, and those in financial distress — to advertisers and, in many documented cases, to outright scammers.
• Zero consent, no accountability. You never opted in. Brokers build shadow profiles from public records, social media scraping, and purchase histories. Even when you request deletion, removal is deliberately tedious and opt-out pages are routinely buried.

Telecoms Had the Tools. They Chose Not to Use Them.

A call authentication framework called STIR/SHAKEN has existed for years — it can verify a caller's identity and make number spoofing far harder. But the industry's resistance and its own technical limitations have kept it from working as promised.

• Legacy network gaps. STIR/SHAKEN is built for IP networks. When calls pass through older TDM/SS7 infrastructure — still common across rural and smaller carriers — the digital signature is stripped, destroying authentication entirely and leaving the door open for spoofed calls.
• Cost constraints. Upgrading legacy Time-Division Multiplexing systems to modern SIP infrastructure is prohibitively expensive for smaller carriers, creating widespread verification gaps that bad actors exploit.
• Certificate loopholes. The original framework let third-party providers sign and attest to call traffic, creating loopholes for fraudulent calls. The FCC has had to repeatedly tighten these rules — years after the system was supposed to be protecting you.

A Federal Law Was Passed. It Didn't Work.

Congress passed the TRACED Act in 2019 with broad bipartisan support. It mandated STIR/SHAKEN deployment, expanded the FCC's enforcement authority, and directed carriers to develop call-blocking tools. On paper, it looked like a turning point.

• Weak penalties with no teeth. The law increased maximum fines for illegal robocallers — but enforcement actions remain rare, slow, and difficult to execute against operators who frequently change names, numbers, and jurisdictions.
• International calls bypass the system. A large share of illegal robocalls originate overseas, where U.S. law has no reach and STIR/SHAKEN authentication is never applied in the first place.
• The calls kept coming. In the years since the TRACED Act passed, illegal robocall volume has continued to grow. The law exists on the books. Meaningful accountability for individual consumers does not.