January Total Represented a Nearly 10% Rise in Robocall Volumes over December

In January, Americans received over 3.9 billion robocalls, putting 2022 on pace to hit roughly 47 billion robocalls for the year. This call volume marked a 9.7% increase from December.

Robocallers appear to have returned to work after the big drop in calls during December’s holiday season. January robocalls averaged 126.3 million calls/day and 1,462 calls/second, compared to 115.1 million calls/day and 1,332 calls/second in December.

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The Most Unwanted Robocall Campaign of the Month involved an apparent marketing pitch to offer DirecTV at a discount. That campaign is estimated to have been the source of up to 100 million robocalls during January. The call left the following message, using a variety of different caller IDs, all with the same toll-free call back number:

“Hi there, I’m calling you from AT&T Direct TV to let you know that your existing account is qualified for 50% off. In order to avail the discount kindly call us back at 866-862-8401 from 8:00 AM till 9:00 PM Pacific standard time. Thank you and have a great day.”

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.

“Despite the 10% increase in calls in January, monthly robocalls continue to be on a lower plateau of roughly 4 billion robocalls per month since the STIR/SHAKEN rollout on June 30th, 2021,” said YouMail CEO Alex Quilici. “The good news is that this is almost 1 billion calls per month lower than last year’s peak in March 2021.”

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Scam Calls Declined in January

In January, the number of scam calls decreased by 4%, while telemarketing and payment reminder calls each stayed mostly flat, while alerts and reminders jumped 28%. This trend is a positive one, as alerts and reminders are notifications that are generally wanted, while spam and telemarketing are generally unwanted and have declined to just over 52% of all robocalls.

“Winners” in January 2022

In January, the same cities, area codes, and states that have had the most robocalls in recent months continued to do, though the numbers of calls were significantly lower than in past months.

The one change in January is Macon, Georgia replacing Washington, DC as the city with the third-most robocalls per person.

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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