Monthly Robocall Volume Up 8.5%, and Back to Pre-Stir/Shaken Pace

Americans received over 4.3 billion robocalls in June, marking an 8.5% increase from May. Because May has one more day than June, robocalls were actually up 13.4% on a daily basis. Specifically, June averaged 144.3 million calls/day and 1,670 calls/second, compared to 127.2 million calls/day and 1,472 calls/second in May.

The rollout of STIR/SHAKEN regulations one year ago on June 30, 2021, seems to have made little overall difference, as the robocall volume in June 2022 was almost identical to that of June 2021. US consumers have received 48.3 billion robocalls since the rule was initially rolled out one year ago.

“Now that a year has passed since STIR/SHAKEN was launched nationally, we can see that the big drop in robocalls volumes many predicted simply has not occurred,” said YouMail CEO Alex Quilici. “Robocallers continue to evolve their techniques, and it’s clear that more efforts in enforcement, technology, and changing consumer behavior are going to be required to make continued progress.”

These latest figures are provided by YouMail, a totally free robocall blocking app and call protection service for mobile phones. These figures are determined by extrapolating from the robocall traffic attempting to get through to YouMail’s millions of active users.

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Most Unwanted Robocall in June

June’s most unwanted robocall campaign is estimated to have been the source of tens of millions of robocalls from tens of thousands of different numbers. As in this example, the callers appear to be pushing debt reduction or debt cancellation services. Like many other illegal telemarketing or scam calls, they appear to be violating a variety of telemarketing regulations, as they do not identify themselves, do not provide a call back number, and appear to be calling people who did not give prior consent. Here is the call transcript:

In order to enroll in one of our programs, including that cancellation or the hardship program. You must have more than $5,000 and unsecured debt that is credit card personal loans medical bills or pay day loans. If you have over $5,000 in unsecured debt and would like to speak to an assigned agent about your enrollment options. Please press one again, please press one to speak to a live agent to be place on our do not call list press five, please make your selection now.

June 2022 Saw Big Jumps in Scams and Spam Robocalls

June saw over 400 million more scam and spam robocalls combined, but approximately 100 million fewer notifications calls. Together, there were roughly 2.4 billion likely unwanted robocalls in June, showing how far we still have to go to solve the robocall problem.

“Winners” in June 2022

The high-volume cities, area codes, and states in June were identical to past months, and they all increased volumes, though mostly at lower levels of increase than the national trend for the month.

These data points are provided by YouMail, a free call protection app for mobile phones. YouMail recently won the American Business Awards’ Gold Stevie Award for Technical Innovation of the Year, and the YouMail app was named the nation’s best robocall-blocking solution in a competition organized by Geoffrey Fowler of the Washington Post.

YouMail blocks unwanted robocallers by making sure the user’s phone doesn’t ring, and then plays an out-of-service message that leads them 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.

YouMail provides the YouMail Robocall Index to estimate robocall volume across the country and for specific area codes every month. This estimate is formed by extrapolating from the behavior of the billions of calls YouMail has handled for its users, and these statistics are regularly cited by the FCC as a definitive source for national data trends.

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