compliance
TRACED Act
A 2019 US law that strengthened robocall enforcement, pushed carriers to verify caller ID with STIR/SHAKEN, and raised the penalties for illegal calls.
The TRACED Act (Pallone-Thune Telephone Robocall Abuse Criminal Enforcement and Deterrence Act) is a US law passed in 2019. It did not replace the older telemarketing rules; it gave regulators sharper teeth against illegal automated calls and set firm deadlines for the phone industry to fight caller-ID fraud. Think of it as the law that turned years of robocall complaints into concrete enforcement powers and engineering mandates.
Two changes matter most for a dialing shop. First, it raised the fines for an illegal Robocall campaign and extended the window regulators have to chase offenders, so old activity can come back to bite. Second, it ordered carriers to roll out STIR/SHAKEN, the framework that cryptographically signs a call so the receiving network can judge whether the caller ID is genuine. That signing is now baked into how US calls travel between networks.
For VICIdial users, the practical fallout is caller-ID trust. If your outbound number is not signed with a good Call attestation level, more of your calls show up as suspect, get flagged on the receiver's screen, and earn fewer answers. Spoofing a number you do not legitimately own, once treated as a grey area, is now firmly on the wrong side of the line, so Caller ID spoofing is something to steer well clear of. The reliable approach is to dial from numbers you actually control and to register them properly with your Carrier so they sign with high attestation.
It also pushes the burden upstream: carriers that knowingly carry illegal traffic face their own exposure, which means a sloppy operation can find its trunks shut off rather than just fined. The TRACED Act works alongside the older TCPA, and the FCC is the agency that writes and enforces most of the detailed rules that flow from it. This is a plain-language summary, not legal advice. If a lot of your traffic crosses state lines or international borders, talk to a compliance lawyer before you scale a campaign on it.
Related terms
Call attestation
The confidence rating a carrier attaches to a call under STIR/SHAKEN, saying how sure it is that you actually own the number you are calling from.
Caller ID spoofing
Caller ID spoofing is sending a false or misleading number on outbound calls so the recipient cannot see who is really calling, which is broadly illegal.
FCC
The FCC is the US agency that regulates phone networks and writes many TCPA rules, including consent, robocall, and caller-ID requirements that dialers must follow.
Robocall
An automated phone call that plays a recorded message or dials by machine, often without a live agent on the line when the call connects.
STIR/SHAKEN
A system carriers use to digitally sign caller ID, proving a call really comes from the number it claims, which helps cut down on spoofed and fraudulent calls.
TCPA
The TCPA is a US law restricting automated calls and texts, requiring consent before dialing cell phones with autodialers and limiting when and how often you may call.