ORLANDO, Fla. (Ivanhoe Newswire) — How many calls did you make today? How many times did your phone ring? The average person receives or makes ten phone calls a day on their cellphone alone, but not all those calls are social or business. Fraud calls are on the rise.
Wait! Before you answer that next call … do you know who’s on the other end? According to hiya, a Caller ID app, there were over 26.3 billion robocalls last year. Nearly 30 percent of all calls were fraudulent. What have they called you for?
According to the Federal Trade Commission, those who fell for the fraud calls lost on average 700 dollars totaling to 332 million dollars. But there is a way to stop it. If you have a home phone, register both your home and mobile number on the FTC’s national do not call registry in order to report unwanted calls. You can also call the f-t-c or the federal communications commission to file a consumer complaint for them to add the number to their system. For your cellphone, you can buy apps such as Nomorobo which has stopped over a million fraud calls, Truecaller, Robokiller or hiya premium. With tips to protect you and your phone.
The top five robocalls are fake IRS, Chinese Consulate, health insurance, neighbor spoofing and the search engine optimization. Texas is the worst! Scammers have targeted seniors in particular, obtaining over two billion a year. A study by annals of internal medicine, suggest that falling for these scams could be a sign on early stages of dementia.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/07/business/fraud-robocalls-spoofing.html?searchResultPosition=57 https://www.ctia.org/consumer-resources/how-to-stop-robocalls
https://www.nomorobo.com/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/columnist/komando/2019/02/07/no-more-robocalls-how-block-unwanted-calls-iphone-android/2778059002/
https://www.consumeraffairs.com/news/the-top-five-robocall-scams-of-2018-112918.html
http://fortune.com/2019/01/30/robocalls-spam-calls-increasing/ https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/13/older-americans-lose-almost-3-billion-a-year-to-scams.html
Contributor(s) to this news report include: Keon Broadnax, Writer and Robert Walko, Editor.
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