Robocalls are to cell phones what spam is to be sent via email. Unnecessary calls that nobody wants or needs, generously riddled with scams to steal your money or your personal information.
A quick look at the logs of my call blockers reveals that I have received over 90 calls from potential telemarketers and scammers in April alone. I know from my experience with the application that the majority of them were automated calls. However, it seems that I am not alone in my situation in the face of these annoying troubles.
According to statistics published by YouMail, a popular call monitoring application, "3.4 billion automated calls were made in April 2018, or about 10.4 calls per person of interest." Although I switched from YouMail to another service, I am sad to see that I am well above their recorded average.
Even sadder, it is that the problem only gets worse. Automated calls have increased by 900 million calls since that date last year. The rise in spam calls is occurring despite the efforts of regulators and telecoms to reduce these abuses.
The Consumer Protection Act 1991 and the National Do Not Call Registry did very little to stem the tide of legitimate or unlisted telemarketers, even though the registry now contains almost 230 million numbers.
Fraudulent appellants continually look for ways to circumvent laws, regulations and blocking methods. The technology has allowed companies to not only anonymously call us by identity impersonation numbers, but also by using machines to make calls in order to reach more numbers in a day. than to appeal to the human
.Although the problem is worsening, regulators do not ignore it. Over the past two weeks, the House and Senate have passed or introduced bills to combat automated appeals. These measures are in addition to the regulations adopted in 2017 allowing telecoms to block certain types of calls.
However, since most fraudulent calls go through various networks and cellular service providers, they are difficult to trace back to a starting point. Even then, most scammers reside outside the jurisdiction of the United States so little, if anything, can be done to punish or arrest the appellants.
It seems that the only real way to combat robotic calls is to develop better technology to identify calls when they arrive. Call blockers like YouMail or Call Protect from AT & T, even if they are not perfect, are at least pretty good calls. It's one of those cases where a defense is better than nothing at all.
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