Robocalls skyrocket 40% since February
An estimated 4.1 billion scam calls were made nationwide in June
Wondering whether you should pick up that random number that just called?
Chances are, it’s a robocall, and it may be a scam.
Robocalls have been on the rise in the United States: An estimated 4.1 billion robocalls were made nationwide in June alone, according to data compiled by YouMail, an app that aims to prevent robocalls by playing an out-ofservice message from your phone. Since February this year, the number of robocalls made to phone users across the country has risen more than 40 percent, it says.
Most of the time, these robocalls are after people’s money. With the rapid improvement of phone caller ID – which, on most cellphones, can now warn you of an incoming potential scam call – and the proliferation of apps designed to screen for fake calls, the number of robocalls that actually get picked up on the first try is declining, according to YouMail CEO Alex Quilici.
This might explain the sudden uptick
in robocalls. When the first calls don’t make it through, more attempts have to be made. But this doesn’t necessarily mean that phone call scams are becoming less successful, Quilici said.
“What we can tell is that (robocalls) are extremely cheap to make,” Quilici said. “You just get a couple of those people to fall for it, and that pays for an awful lot of calls.”
Making things more complicated: Some of these callers are legitimate, if no less annoying. According to Quilici, about 29 percent of the robocalls made in May were scams, with the rest being telemarketing, payment reminders or debt collection reminders.
The problem, he said, comes in when scammers cover their tracks by disguising their caller IDs with legitimate phone numbers, a technique called “spoofing.” All of the numbers on the top 10 list, Quilici said, are risky. The safest thing to do when an unknown number pings your phone is to just let it roll to voicemail.
Every month, YouMail collects audio clippings from the voicemails robocalls leave on their 10 million users’ phones. Once YouMail is alerted to a robocaller’s phone number, the number is entered into their database, where their users can contribute additional information such as comments or additional audio clips. YouMail then extrapolates and compares this data against the approximately 324 million phone users in the U.S. to estimate how many people across the country could be affected by robocalls. The No. 1 most common robocall, Quilici said, is always about interest rates.
Here were the top three robocallers by volume in June.
1. 800-955-6600: Capital One With a volume of 37 million calls, this number leaves a voicemail from a woman claiming to be from Capital One Bank calling to discuss an “important business matter.”
2. 800-266-2278: Comcast Customer Service
This caller leaves a voicemail claiming to be a courtesy call from the cable and communications network Comcast. It made calls an estimated 14 million times.
3. 877-647-8552: Wells Fargo
This caller tried 14 million times, leaving a voicemail claiming to be a debt collector from Wells Fargo.