Robocalls have become a normal part of the day, for better or worse. Phone (News - Alert) owners receive a random phone call, glance at the caller ID or even answer the phone, and to no one's surprise, it's a robocall.
U.S. consumers are on pace to receive more than 48 million robocalls this year, which is similar to 2021. July saw nearly a 12% decrease in robocalls received by Americans, compared to June, according to the YouMail Robocall Index. The 3.8 billion robocalls for July were actually a 14.7% decrease on a daily basis when the extra day in July is factored in.
July had 10 weekend days compared to June’s eight weekend days, so this likely contributed to the decline. Robocallers typically make fewer calls on weekends – though it may not always seem that way.
"It's nice to see a meaningful drop in daily robocalls in July, though we've seen month-over-month drops before," said YouMail CEO Alex Quilici (News - Alert).
July saw 430 million fewer scam and spam robocalls combined than June. STIR/SHAKEN implementation is reducing the number of robocall campaigns based on spoofed IDs, which drives down the number of obvious scam calls. But others are harder to detect because they appear to be telemarketing campaigns, unless there is other evidence of fraud. According to YouMail (News - Alert), it is important to measure and focus on the overall number of spam and scam calls combined to track progress.
With the high volume of robocalls pre
dicted by the end of the year, phone users are encouraged to install call protection apps or software to help slow down the amount of robocalls received.
YouMail is one example –a free call protection app that blocks unwanted robocallers by making sure the user's phone doesn't ring and then plays an out-of-service message that leads callers to think they dialed an invalid number. YouMail identifies problematic numbers and robocalls using a combination of its recently patented audio fingerprinting technology, call patterns and consumer feedback.
“Continuing efforts in enforcement, technology improvements and changes in consumer behavior should ultimately lessen the number and impact of these calls," said Quilici.