The Truth in Caller ID Act is the federal law that makes it illegal to falsify caller ID information when the caller is trying to defraud, harm, or wrongfully obtain something of value from the person on the other end. Codified at 47 U.S.C. § 227(e), it carries civil penalties of up to $10,000 for each violation, criminal fines for willful offenders, and the possibility of up to one year in prison. Amendments passed in 2018 and 2019 extended the ban to spoofed text messages and to calls placed from outside the United States to people inside it.
What Counts as Illegal Spoofing
The prohibition reaches anyone who knowingly causes a caller ID service to display misleading or inaccurate information with one of three specific motives: intent to defraud, intent to cause harm, or intent to wrongfully obtain anything of value.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 47 U.S.C. 227 – Restrictions on Use of Telephone Equipment All three parts of that sentence matter. The display has to be misleading, the caller has to know it, and the caller has to be acting with one of those motives.
Fraudulent intent covers the familiar scam call: someone pretending to be the IRS, a bank, or a utility to pull money or personal information out of the recipient. “Causing harm” reaches stalking, harassment, and disruption of emergency services. “Wrongfully obtaining anything of value” catches situations where the caller tricks someone into handing over a benefit or asset the caller has no right to receive. Federal regulators look at the full context of the call to decide which motive, if any, was at work.
What the Law Does Not Prohibit
Changing the number that appears on a recipient’s screen is not illegal in itself. A business routing outbound calls through its main office line, or a doctor’s office displaying a general number rather than a personal extension, breaks no law because there’s no deceptive intent behind the substitution. Blocking your caller ID from appearing at all is also not a violation. The statute targets misleading information, not the absence of information.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 47 U.S.C. 227 – Restrictions on Use of Telephone Equipment
The statute also carves out two explicit exemptions. Authorized activities of a law enforcement agency, including undercover investigations and witness protection operations, fall outside the prohibition. So does caller ID manipulation specifically authorized by a court order.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 47 U.S.C. 227 – Restrictions on Use of Telephone Equipment The FCC has additional discretion to create further exemptions and has declined to impose verification requirements that would have kept domestic violence shelters from masking their outbound numbers, a protective use of spoofing recognized in the law’s legislative history.2Federal Register. Implementation of the Truth in Caller ID Act
Texts and Calls From Overseas
When Congress first passed the Truth in Caller ID Act in 2009, it covered only traditional phone service and interconnected Voice over Internet Protocol. Text messages and calls originating overseas fell outside the law entirely, and scam operations exploited both gaps at scale.
Section 503 of the RAY BAUM’S Act, signed in 2018, closed them. The statute now applies to any “voice service or text messaging service” and reaches any person outside the United States when the recipient is inside it.3Congress.gov. Text – H.R.4986 – 115th Congress (2017-2018) RAY BAUM’S Act “Text message” is defined to include SMS and MMS messages sent to or from a device identified by a 10-digit phone number. Real-time voice and video calls are excluded, as are messages sent entirely within a single IP-based messaging platform.4Federal Register. Truth in Caller ID Spoofing the sender information on a scam text now carries the same federal exposure as spoofing a call.
Civil Penalties
The FCC can impose a civil forfeiture of up to $10,000 for each individual spoofing violation. A continuing violation can be penalized at three times that amount per day, and the total for any single act or failure to act is capped at $1,000,000.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 47 U.S.C. 227 – Restrictions on Use of Telephone Equipment Those are the base statutory numbers. The Federal Civil Penalties Inflation Adjustment Act requires agencies to raise civil penalty caps periodically, so the effective maximums in any given enforcement action can be higher. In a 2026 enforcement order involving mandatory call-blocking violations, the FCC applied per-violation amounts above $25,000.5Federal Communications Commission. Notice of Apparent Liability for Forfeiture (FCC 26-22)
Spoofing operations often involve thousands of individual calls or texts, so aggregate exposure for a large campaign can climb well into the millions even with the per-act cap in place. The FCC weighs factors such as the severity of the conduct, the violator’s history, and whether the violation was intentional when it sets a specific penalty.
Criminal Penalties
The Act is not purely a civil statute. Anyone who willfully and knowingly violates the spoofing prohibition faces criminal fines of up to $10,000 per violation, or three times that amount for each day of a continuing violation. The statute expressly says the criminal fine does not displace the imprisonment authorized by 47 U.S.C. § 501, which allows up to one year in prison for willful violations of the Communications Act. A court can impose the fine and a prison sentence together.6Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 47 U.S. Code 227 – Restrictions on Use of Telephone Equipment
Who Enforces the Law
The FCC holds primary federal enforcement authority. Under the original law, the Commission generally had to issue a warning citation before pursuing penalties against anyone who wasn’t a licensed telecommunications provider. The TRACED Act of 2019 changed that framework in three important ways.
- The FCC can now issue a Notice of Apparent Liability and propose a forfeiture penalty for spoofing violations without first sending a warning.7Federal Communications Commission. TRACED Act Implementation
- The statute of limitations for FCC spoofing enforcement was doubled from two years to four years.8Federal Communications Commission. Amendment of Section 1.80 of the Commission’s Rules Implementing Section 3 of the TRACED Act
- Additional enhanced penalties were authorized for deliberate unlawful robocall and spoofing conduct.
State enforcement runs alongside federal enforcement. Under 47 U.S.C. § 227(e)(6), a state attorney general or other authorized state officer can sue in federal district court on behalf of state residents to enforce the spoofing ban or collect civil penalties. The state has to notify the FCC before filing, and the Commission can intervene in the case.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 47 U.S.C. 227 – Restrictions on Use of Telephone Equipment Spoofers face potential pressure from both fronts at once.
Can You Sue a Spoofer Yourself
No. This is the part of the law that surprises most consumers. Other subsections of 47 U.S.C. § 227, including the Telephone Consumer Protection Act provisions on robocalls and telemarketing, explicitly create a private right of action that lets individuals file lawsuits and recover damages. Subsection (e), which governs caller ID spoofing, has no equivalent provision.6Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 47 U.S. Code 227 – Restrictions on Use of Telephone Equipment If you’re targeted by a spoofed call or text, your remedies under this specific statute are limited to reporting the violation and hoping regulators or your state attorney general act on it. Other federal and state fraud laws may provide separate causes of action, but the Truth in Caller ID Act itself does not.
How to Report a Spoofed Call or Text
The FCC accepts complaints through its Consumer Complaint Center. File online and select “Unwanted Calls” as the issue type. If your own number is the one being used to spoof other people, choose the “my own number is being spoofed” sub-category instead.9Federal Communications Commission. Unwanted Calls and Texts The Commission does not resolve complaints on an individual basis, but it uses the data to identify patterns and build enforcement cases. When a spoofing operation generates enough complaints, those filings become the evidentiary foundation for a Notice of Apparent Liability and the penalties that follow. Filing is worth doing even without an individual response.