Illegal Political Robo Calls Ring Wyoming Phones

I have a rule, only a few people have my personal phone number, if I don't know who's calling I'm not answering it. But not everybody can do that. Especially business owners.

It's one thing to ignore a call that is clearly out of state. But today's robo-callers can now grab that 307 area code and try to fool you.

According to WyoFile: In the wee hours of Aug. 30, phones across Wyoming began ringing.

State residents reported as many as five calls coming in from roughly midnight through 3:30 a.m., all automated and all seeking the recipients’ opinions of U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney’s (R-Wyoming) Republican primary challengers.

“I was pretty shook up,” Sen. Cale Case (R-Lander), who received two late-night calls from the number, said. “It was the same number, and I thought it might have been someone I’m the guardian of who was in the hospital. But when I listened to the messages, and they were both about the Republican primary, I was pissed as hell.” (WyoFile).

At this point, no one knows who is behind the calls. Various politicians and political candidates are distancing themselves, saying they have nothing to do with it.

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The Wyoming Republican Party posted on Facebook: “Be assured these calls are not being generated on behalf of any Wyoming Republican state or county party. This is a regrettable event, especially when our focus and concerns are on much more serious issues.”

One thing is known, after a little digging by WyoFile, that the calls are not coming from Wyoming as the caller ID phone would have you believe.

WyoFile did a little digging and found a San Francisco-based company Twilio, a cloud communications platform which allows users to conduct automated phone and text campaigns. The company — which declined to disclose its client — said in a statement it seeks to resolve any abuses of its platform internally, and encouraged anyone receiving an illegal robocall to report the incident to the FCC.

“When we are notified of a potential [Acceptable Use Policy] violation, we have a team in place to work with customers to get them back into compliance,” Cris Paden, Twilio’s director of corporate communications, wrote in a statement.

I've often wondered if "robo-calls" do more to turn people off than anything else. I know that on the rare occasion when I get one I'll not be doing business, in any way, to the jerks who are bothering me with a recorded message.