Last month Americans received about 4.2 billion robocalls, 140 million a day. That’s less than in August, but the reasons aren’t what you’d hoped. There are only 30 days in September.
“September has a holiday with Labor Day and August doesn’t. So that’s another 3% of robocalls since robo-callers take those days off.”
Alex Quilici, CEO of the robocall blocking app YouMail, tells me the type of calls going out changes during the year. Right now?
“We’re starting to see student loan fraud ramp up because of the $10,000 forgiveness, so they’re pretending to need the information to make that happen. We’re seeing a lot of debt reduction calls that are problematic and I think the worst one right now, in my opinion, are the utility scams. These scammers are calling people up saying you’re going to be disconnected in the next half hour if you don’t pay $200-$300 right away.”
Instead of instructing the victims to send a check to the utility company, the scammer pressures them to buy a gift card, often while staying on the phone as they drive to the store, and then gives the scammer the numbers over the phone.
But Quilici tells me, he sees signs that bad robocalls could someday go the way of bad spam emails that don’t bother us as much anymore.
“We’re seeing technology improve it. We’re seeing consumers use third-party apps to block calls so they don’t have to make those decisions. We’re seeing consumers not calling numbers back automatically without doing research.”
Remember, don’t engage with a scammer or spammer. If someone doesn’t pick up when you first say hello, hang up. And while you might get some enjoyment out of telling them off, it only shows other spammers that your number is in service.
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