Robocalling Surges in February, Sets Daily Record in Index; FCC Warns of 'Neighbor Spoofing'
There were 2.75 billion U.S. robocalls in February, a 24 percent increase over last February, YouMail said Thursday. That's an average of 98.1 million per day, setting a daily record based on index data starting in 2015. Atlanta topped the…
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list of robocalled cities for the 27th straight month, with residents receiving 119.5 million robocalls. Chicago displaced Dallas as the city generating the most robocalls with 95.3 million, while "614" in Columbus, Ohio, was the most prolific robocall generator among area codes. YouMail is "warning folks to download a robocall blocker and to not pick up any calls from numbers they do not recognize, and instead allow them to go directly into voicemail," said CEO Alex Quilici. An FCC alert warned of "'neighbor spoofing' scams where thieves manipulate caller ID information in ways that make calls appear to have been placed locally" even if they came from elsewhere, including overseas. Scammers use spoofing to increase the odds a consumer will pick up the phone and trust the caller, the agency said. It offered consumer tips and noted FCC enforcement and policy efforts to combat "illegal robocalling and malicious spoofing."