Know Your Customer

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) put out a document on April 30th, 2026 that recently gained traction due to 404 Media's recent post on the matter. The document puts out a potential method of ridding the world of scam calls; they want all of your personally identifiable information (PII).

What's the problem?

Scam calls are a part of every person's life. If you've given out your phone number, or potentially if you haven't, your phone number has been called by a number that is telling you they're someone else. Whether that number is impersonating PayPal, Microsoft, or just a generic tech support, they all are going for something similar: your hard-earned cash. The FCC is the independent agency of the federal government that tries to mitigate this problem or potentially stop it altogether.

What's the plan?

The FCC is planning on forcing all telecommunication companies to gather information on their customers before being able to use cellular networks. As part of the Know-Your-Customer rules for companies, the FCC is trying to add on a requirement for them to collect information on new and renewing customers such as your full government name, your government ID, and all other phone numbers you're the owner of. That means all of your personal information is linked to your phone number.

Once again, the plan is to, instead of actually fixing the problem, collect the information of every single person in the United States of America and pretend they're doing something to fix said problem. It's remarkable that, in just these past few years, a substantial amount of governments are going the route of mass surveillance. Australia and the United Kingdom are pushing to "protect the children" by requiring every website you visit to do age verification. The USA is following suit as of recent. Now, they're trying to link each person to any possible means of communication.