If you were bombarded by spam calls and texts last year, you probably weren’t alone. A new report, spotted by The Wall Street Journal , r...
If you were bombarded by spam calls and texts last year, you probably weren’t alone. A new report, spotted by The Wall Street Journal, reveals that Americans received 26.3 billion robocalls last year, up 46 percent from 2017. Spam monitoring service Hiya has been analyzing calls, and found that many people are just simply not picking up calls anymore.
While the Do Not Call Registry was established in 2003, the volume of calls has still grown significantly in recent years. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) revealed to The Vergelast year that it’s fielding an average of around 500,000 complaints a month over robocalls. The problem has led to some consumers filing lawsuits under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) if they receive calls when they’re listed on the Do Not Call Registry.
Robocallers are increasingly masking their spam with genuine-looking local numbers, making it more difficult to detect them. Thankfully, there are a variety of apps and services available on both iOS and Android that help protect against robocalls. Carriers are also under increased pressure from the FCC to tackle nuisance robocalls. The regulator wants carriers to adopt the SHAKEN / STIR protocol, a framework that validates phone calls as they pass through networks and allows consumers to ensure the call is genuine.
T-Mobile is planning to activate the SHAKEN / STIR caller authentication soon, and AT&T, Verizon, and Sprint are all committing to enabling it on their networks. With some analysts predicting half of all cellphone calls could be spam in 2019, the protections can’t come soon enough.
I figured out how they keep calling my cell phone. If they get into a certain area code and they know the first 3 digits of a cell phone carrier they start calling the cell phones. If you do not answer your phone they think it's an unassigned number and will start using it. So far I have blocked well over 100 numbers on my phone. They are using what's commonly known as Google Phones to do this calling thru computers. I got two yesterday and called the number right back only to discover that the phone's owners did not call me and did not use their phones either!!!! I had the same thing happen to me the other day. Someone called me and insisted I called them just now and I told them that I was not even in the same room as my phone and did not call them. The number grabbers must be big business giving the robot companies fresh fish daily!!!!! The way to end robo calls to your cell is to answer the call and try to opt out and then immediately block the number. I keep getting the same robo asking me if I have college loan debt....I've blocked 7 different numbers this robot has called me from....!!!
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