ORLANDO, Fla. (Ivanhoe Newswire) – Last year robo calls dropped by 22 percent in the U.S. to the lowest in three years because international call centers were shut down during the pandemic. Government efforts to stop COVID-19 related scams also helped reduce the number of robocalls in 2020. But even with that decline U.S. consumers still received 45.9 billion robocalls. Unwanted calls, including illegal and spoofed robocalls, are the FCC’s top consumer complaint and top consumer protection priority.
If you answer the phone and hear a recorded message instead of a live person … it’s a robocall!
Over eight-point-six billion robocalls have already been placed in the U.S. this year and they will likely reach 51.5 billion by the end of the year.
Want to avoid robocalls? First, be aware of caller ID showing a local unknown number. Don’t respond to any questions, especially those that can be answered with yes. If you have a voicemail account with your phone service, be sure to set a password for it. A hacker could hack your home phone number and gain access to your voicemail if you do not set a password. And how do you know if your incoming texts are real or robo? Is this real? How about this one? Both are robo! If the message has typos or poor grammar, requests urgent action, or contains a suspicious link it’s likely a scam. Your best action to take, delete it!
Other ways to avoid scammers, sign up for the FTC’s national Do Not Call Registry. It’s illegal for telemarketers to call you if you are on this list. For texts you can copy the message and send them to 7726.
Sources:
https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/04/tech/robocalls-pre-pandemic-levels/index.html
https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/04/tech/robocalls-pre-pandemic-levels/index.html
Contributor(s) to this news report include: Jenna Ehrlich, Producer; Robert Walko, Videographer; Robert Walko, Editor.
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