Americans Received Over 26.3 Billion Spam Calls in 2018

• Spam calls are more rampant than ever according to Hiya’s 2018 Robocall Radar.
• According to the report, most American users are reluctant to pick calls due to the issue.
• Phone users are pressurizing the FTC and carriers to adopt protocols to control the issue.

According to a report published by Seattle-based spam-monitoring service Hiya, there has been a 46% increase in spam calls in America since 2017. A large number of Americans are receiving robocalls regularly. Last year, Hiya predicted that up to 50% of all calls made could be spam in 2019 and last year’s numbers indicate that just might be the case.

According to Hiya, a number of phone users are simply not picking calls from unknown numbers anymore due to the rampant amount of spam calls. Even though the Do Not Call Registry was established over 15 years ago, telemarketers and robo callers find their way around blacklists. Over 500,000 complaints are filed to the Federal Trade Commission per month. Some consumers have gone as far as filing lawsuits against the FTC due to their inability to control spam calls.

Image Courtesy of Hiya

Robocallers have become very effective at masking their identity with services available that mask the callers using local numbers. There are apps and services available for mobile users that can be used to identify spam callers, but intervention from carriers is required at this point. A number of phone users are pressurizing to have protocols to deal with robocalls.

A SHAKEN / STIR protocol has been suggested to deal with spam callers. The protocol essentially validates phone calls when they pass through networks to check if the calls are genuine. Calls from bots are automatically rejected under the protocol, but such measures are non-existent in America. Users have to rely on third-party apps that have constantly updated databases to track spam callers.

Hiya has put out a detailed report on their website highlighting the top areas targeted by robo callers and popularly used numbers. According to Hiya chief executive Alex Algard “As our phones continue to be inundated by robocalls, many people no longer want to pick up the phone at all.”

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