TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) — If you live in America, chances are you are being bombarded by spam calls and texts.
Some 26.3 billion robocalls were made to Americans last year. That’s up 46 percent from 2017.
Spam monitoring service Hiya analyzed data from 450,000 app users and found many of them have simply stopped answering calls.
Users reported an average of 10 unwanted robocalls each month and about an average of 60 calls from unrecognized numbers.
“Scam calls have been increasing very steadily, and it’s driving people to not answer their phone,” YouMail CEO Alex Quilici told CNBC earlier this month. “It’s driving people to not answer their phone and it’s kind of created this death spiral of phone calls as the robocallers ramp up their efforts, and the legitimate roboccalls try harder to get through.”
The FCC says its working to “stop the scourge of illegal robocalls” by issuing major fines against spoofers and adopting new rules allowing phone companies to block unwanted calls.
T-Mobile will soon activate its SHAKEN / STIR caller authentication and AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint plan to implement a similar feature.
