U.S. Consumers Received Just Under 4.3 Billion Robocalls in March, According to YouMail Robocall Index

Monthly Volume Has Decreased Almost 15% Year Over Year, As Robocalls Continue at A Stable, Lower Level in 2024 

IRVINE, Calif., April 8, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- U.S. consumers received just under 4.3 billion robocalls in March, which represents a 7.1% decrease over February and a 14.6% decrease over March 2023. This decline also marks the fourth month in a row average of less than 140 million calls/day, which hasn't happened since Fall 2021.

March averaged 137.6 million robocalls/day and 1,592 robocalls/second, up only 0.6% from February's average of 137.2 million robocalls/day and 1,588 robocalls/second. This suggests that the incremental increase in March is almost entirely due to more days in the month.

"Over the past 4 months, we've now reached a lower ongoing level of robocalls, where the daily robocall volume has been very steady," said YouMail CEO Alex Quilici. "The keys now are to understand where we can reduce the volume of illegal and unlawful robocalls further."

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

Unwanted Robocalls, Especially Scam Calls, Are Flattening

Likely unwanted robocall volumes rose to 46% from combined telemarketing and spam calls, up slightly from 45% in February, driven by an increase in telemarketing calls. Overall, unwanted call volumes are steady at just under two billion per month.

Further, scam calls are now remarkably flat in the 400 million/month range, as the scammers have become much more targeted in their calling campaigns.

March 2024's Most Dangerous Robocalling Campaigns

The first campaign generating the most complaints in March is around pre-approved personal loans. In particular, they claim preapproval for a personal loan of up to $48,000, as in calls from this number:

Yes, this is Sarah calling from Release Advisory Approval Department. My full number is 1-844-760-0328. I'm not sure if you've already spoken to an assigned agent, but I do see your pre-approval for up to 48,000 on a few new programs that have recently taken effect. So what I'll do with go ahead and just keep this in a pending status for now. Yeah, if you have about 15 minutes, I can give me a call back and we can go over the details as well as the benefit. Again, my full number is 844-760-0328.

The overall volume for this call is large, in the tens of millions of calls each month from tens of thousands of different numbers. These calls are violating telemarketing sales rules, and further, based on numerous spam reports from consumers, they appear to be calling people who never applied for a personal loan with this company. These types of calls are very dangerous since the callers often claim to need a number of different pieces of personally identifiable information to verify you qualify, which can be used for identity theft, account takeovers, and more. Further, many people they call are in need and easily put aside their skepticism in the hopes this call represents a solution to their financial difficulties.

The other campaign of interest appears to be calling numerous small businesses and threatening that they will lose their search presence in Google. There are multiple variants of this campaign, but a typical one is in calls from this number:

Our records show your Google Business Listing is not properly verified with Google. This can cause customer searching for your services to not be able to find your business online. Call at 833-752-6107 so we can quickly check the status of your Google Business Listing. This will only take a few minutes. That's 833-752-6107.

The overall volume for this Google call is also in the tens of millions of calls per month, calling from tens of thousands of different numbers. They are calling people who claim they never consented to these calls, and they leave a misimpression that Google is calling.

They are a dangerous scam because these calls prey on small businesses' dependency on traffic from Google, and willingness to pay a fee quickly to prevent losing that traffic.

The Source of This Data

These data points are provided by YouMail, a free call protection app for mobile phones. YouMail 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.  

For a full ranking of cities, states and area codes, as well as details on the behavior of robocallers in each area code, please see http://robocallindex.com. To listen to actual voice messages left by robocallers, please visit the YouMail Directory. To join the YouMail Robocall Index mailing list, please write to [email protected].

About YouMail, Inc.

YouMail protects consumers, enterprises, and carriers from harmful phone calls. YouMail provides US and UK consumers app-based call protection services through the YouMail, Another Number, and HulloMail apps. These solutions answer over a billion live calls per year across well over 10 million registered users, powering America's most robust telephone sensor network in identifying and providing zero-hour protection against illegal calling campaigns and cyberattacks. YouMail Protective Services leverages this sensor network to protect consumer-facing enterprises by detecting and helping shut down imposter traffic that can lead to financial or brand damage, as well as to protect carriers with robocall mitigation services that detect and help stop bad traffic originating, traversing, or terminating on their networks. This sensor network is also used to provide the YouMail Robocall Index™ is the nation's definitive source on telephone network activity and attacks. YouMail, Inc. is privately funded and based in Irvine, California. 

Contact:
Gabriella Troiani for YouMail
Lumina Communications
[email protected]

SOURCE YouMail Inc.