Twilio Joins State Attorneys General Anti-Robocall Coalition

SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 27, 2020 — Twilio (NYSE: TWLO), the leading cloud communications platform, today announced that it has joined the state attorneys general coalition to stop illegal robocalls. The public/private partnership consists of all 50 states attorneys general, including Washington, D.C., and numerous major stakeholders in the telecommunications industry to share information and coordinate efforts to protect consumers from phone scams and unwanted communications.

As part of the effort, Twilio supports and has agreed to take action on the group’s eight robocall principles:

• Support carriers offering free call blocking and labeling
• Implement the SHAKEN/STIR call authentication protocol, intended to combat illegal spoofing 
• Analyze and monitor network traffic to identify and monitor patterns consistent with robocalls 
• Investigate suspicious calls and calling patterns to identify the party that is using its network to originate, route, or terminate suspicious calls and take appropriate action 
• Confirm the identity of commercial VoIP customers by collecting relevant identity information. 
• Require traceback cooperation in contracts to help determine the origin of a call which can be used to find the source of an illegal robocall and identify the entities responsible for those calls
• Cooperate in traceback investigations conducted by law enforcement and USTelecom’s Industry Traceback Group. 
• Communicate with state attorneys general about recognized scams and trends in illegal robocalling

The attorneys general group is led and coordinated by North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein: “We welcome Twilio’s adoption of these principles and look forward to working together to confront illegal robocalls.”

“Illegal robocalls present a complicated problem requiring a multi-faceted approach to bring trust back to the phone call for consumers,” said Jeff Lawson, co-founder and chief executive officer of Twilio. “It takes a combined effort of public policy, law enforcement, industry cooperation and innovation to stop the calls we don’t want, but more importantly, make sure the calls we do want still come through. We look forward to working with the state attorneys general and our industry colleagues to bring relief to consumers from phone scams as soon as possible.”

Joining the state attorneys general anti-robocall coalition continues a number of other proactive efforts by Twilio to combat illegal robocalls. Twilio recently joined as a steering committee member to USTelecom’s Industry Traceback Group, where major stakeholders in the telecommunications industry come together to actively trace and identify the source of illegal robocalls, helping to prevent illegal robocalls from the start. Twilio also co-chairs the Robocalling and Communication ID Spoofing group for the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS), in addition to having a seat on the board of directors. ATIS, along with the Internet Engineering Task Force and the SIP Forum (Session Initiation Protocol), all work together as an industry consortium with the telecommunications industry to develop and implement the SHAKEN/STIR protocol to eradicate illegal spoofing. Twilio also is a member of the Messaging, Malware and Mobile Anti-Abuse Working Group (M3AAWG), the premier industry group dedicated to combating bots, malware, spam, viruses, denial-of-service attacks and other online exploitation across platforms, including mobile, email, voice and emerging platforms such as social messaging. Lastly, the Federal Communications Commission  appointed Twilio to the re-chartered North American Numbering Council (NANC). The NANC is a federal advisory committee that was created to advise the FCC on numbering issues in the United States and to make recommendations that foster efficient and impartial number administration.