Here's how the FCC just challenged the scourge of robocallers

Americans may get around 2.4 billion robocalls a month, so the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) just endowed phone companies with a new weapon.

On Thursday, the FCC announced that phone companies — like Sprint and AT&T — can now proactively block certain phone numbers before a robocall can even happen.

According to the FCC, technological innovations allow robocallers to easily impersonate phone numbers that don't actually dial out, such as from the IRS, while hiding the true caller's identity. These intrusive efforts are an enormous frustration to Americans: The FCC says it receives 200,000 complaints about robocalls every month — making it the FCC's top consumer complaint.

"These calls are very likely to be illegal or fraudulent; there’s no legitimate reason for anyone to spoof caller ID to make it seem as if he or she is calling from an unassigned or invalid phone number," FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said in a statement.

Pai made it clear that this decision certainly won't end all robocalls, but it's the beginning of a legitimate effort to stymie robocallers.

"Make no mistake — this isn’t the end of our efforts.  We’ll need to do more, and we will," said Pai.

Fraudulent robocallers made quite a ridiculous showing earlier this week when an attempt was made to smear The Washington Post's journalistic efforts: After the paper reported a woman's claim that Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore initiated a sexual encounter while she was 14 and he was 32, Alabama voters began to get robocalls from a fake Washington Post reporter named "Bernie Bernstein." The non-existent Bernstein offered between $5,000 and $7,000 to women who gave damaging remarks about Moore.

With robocallers now seeking to challenge the work of the free press, it's certainly a prudent time for the FCC to start arming phone companies with simple tools to combat such fraud.