Spam calls have been on the rise lately and the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) is looking to take steps to alleviate this for Canadians 

On Tuesday, the CRTC announced that there is new caller ID technology that will help with the increased calls . The technology named STIR/SHAKEN, which stands for Secure Telephony Identity Revisited (STIR) and Signature-based Handling of Asserted information using toKENs (SHAKEN) will help reduce the frequency and impact of caller ID spoofing. 

"This new caller ID technology will empower Canadians to determine which calls are legitimate and worth answering, and which need to be treated with caution. As more providers upgrade their networks, STIR/SHAKEN will undoubtedly reduce spoofing and help Canadians regain peace of mind when answering phone call," explained Ian Scott, the Chairperson and CEO of the CRTC in a written statement.

The CRTC has been working over the past few years to combat these spam and spoof calls, approving a trial of a new call-blocking measure using artificial intelligence developed by Bell Canada, between July 2020 and October 2021, more than 1.1 billion calls were blocked before reaching Bell’s subscribers.

The CRTC said they are encouraging service providers to offer their customers call-filtering services that provide advanced call-management features as well as asking providers to block certain types of calls within their networks.

According to Hiya’s State of the Call report, a company that tries to protect consumers from spam calls, "People in North America and Europe received an average of 144 spam calls in 2020, 58 per cent of which were suspected fraud calls and that in 2020, there was an estimated 157.4 billion spam and fraud calls in North America and Europe."