The view from the Idea Center

The end is near for the barrage of Mike Bloomberg campaign ads you’ve been seeing and hearing. The billionaire former mayor of New York City, who spent  $17 million on ads in Ohio, ended his Democratic  presidential campaign yesterday and endorsed Joe Biden.

Is similar relief on the way for robocalls? Ohioans were bombarded with 2.2  billion robocalls in 2019. If my calculations are right, that’s almost 200 calls for  every man, woman and child in the state.

Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost this week  launched an initiative to go after the bad actors in the robocall industry who are calling you without your consent or trying to scam you. Like the caller who  conned an 81-year-old woman into wiring money to clear up a phony problem with her Social Security benefits.

"Minutes later, she gets a call from a man. ‘Hi, this is Jake from the FBI, and the person that just called you is a scam artist. But if you can wire me some money, I’ll go get them and bring them to justice,’” Yost said.

The  first rule of fighting robocalls is  don’t answer robocalls, according to Yost. Answering just lets the folks behind the call know they’ve got an active number which they can sell to other callers.

The next step is to  report the call to Yost’s new Robocall Enforcement Unit.  Text “ROBO” to 888111. You’ll get a message from his office asking for more information, so investigators can spot trends and track down illegal telemarketers.

“We can crank up the pain to the point where they don’t want to deal with our state. And that’s exactly what we’re going to do," Yost said.
 

See you bright and early on the radio tomorrow,
Amy Eddings

Need to KnOH

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