Robocalls flood Floridians’ phones, dialing up the ire

MELBOURNE — 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 calls, counted Scott Gardiner of Melbourne, tallying how many spam calls he got in one day.

“I’m pretty sure it’s been a phone number from every one of the 50 states, too,” said Gardiner, noting he’s losing patience. “I’ve asked to be put on the Do Not Call list. Yeah, that doesn’t work.”

It’s a problem most people in the Sunshine State have encountered, and it’s only getting worse. So bad, in fact, that based on recent data from the popular app RoboKiller, which heavily monitors spam calls, Florida is one of the worst states for calls because of an influx of robocalls the company has flagged since the beginning of this year.

Data collected by the Federal Trade Commission, which monitors complaints, show Florida has always been among the worst states in sheer volume. Last year, 588,021 formal complaints were filed to the FTC — second only to California, which had 823,692 spam or scam telemarketing calls — and those are just the calls actually reported.

“We accurately define it as an epidemic,” said Ethan Garr, cocreator of RoboKiller, an app to stop the calls. “What drives this is basic economics. Making these phone calls is so inexpensive for scammers. It costs them less than a penny per minute.”

He said Floridians get an average of 2.1 spam calls per day and attributes it to the many retirees here, as scammers typically go after the elderly who may not be as up to date with technology.

But where are these calls coming from? Are they even legal? And better yet, how do you stop them?

Well, they most certainly are not legal, said Keith Keogh, a Chicago lawyer who’s been part of multiple class-action lawsuits against firms that robocall.

He referenced the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, which designates that companies and individuals can’t bombard a person’s phone with robocalls without their consent. If you’re on the Do Not Call list, the calls aren’t legal.

But that doesn’t stop them, though.