FCC Requires Customer ID for New or Renewed Phone Service to Combat Robocalls

The Federal Communications Commission adopted proposal FCC 26-27 on April 30 under its robocall docket. The rule would require carriers and VoIP providers to collect a customer’s name, physical address, government-issued ID number, and an alternate phone number before activating or renewing service.

The FCC’s own filing states the collected data could help investigate fraud, espionage, or influence operations that undermine national security and abuse in text messaging networks.

Fortune reported that the proposal is framed as a “know your customer” standard modeled on banking practices. Sydney Saubestre, senior policy analyst at the Center for Democracy and Technology’s Privacy and Data Project, said the proposal is misguided and counterproductive.

She noted that the FCC’s own Safe Connections Act recognizes that survivors of domestic violence need a phone without a paper trail.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation and the ACLU filed joint comments with the FCC calling the proposal a data collection regime that harms everyday, law abiding Americans. Their filing notes that the FTC has found a majority of illegal robocalls originate overseas and that fewer than half of U.S.

Telecoms have fully implemented the FCC’s existing call-authentication standard. The filing estimates roughly 15 million adult U.S. citizens lack a driver’s license and 2.6 million have no government-issued photo ID at all.

It adds that the FCC’s draft definition of physical address would exclude P.O. boxes, mail-forwarding services, and shared office space often used by unhoused people and domestic violence survivors. AT&T disclosed in 2024 that hackers downloaded call and text records from 109 million customer accounts.