U.S. Phones Received Just Over 3.8 Billion Robocalls in July, Says YouMail Robocall Index

Monthly Robocall Volume Drops 11.9%, Likely Due to Summer Holidays

IRVINE, Calif., Aug. 3, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Americans received over 3.8 billion robocalls in July, marking an 11.9% decrease from June. Because July has one more day than June, robocalls were actually down a whopping 14.7% on a daily basis. Specifically, July averaged 123.1 million calls/day and 1,424 calls/second, compared to 144.3 million calls/day and 1,670 calls/second in June.

The decline is likely due primarily to the July 4^th holiday, as well as ten weekend days this July versus eight weekend days in June, both of which led to substantially fewer unwanted calls, as robocallers make fewer calls on weekends and holidays.

For the year, US consumers are on pace to receive slightly over 48 million robocalls this year, very similar to last year.

"It's nice to see a meaningful drop in daily robocalls in July, though we've seen month-over-month drops before," said YouMail CEO Alex Quilici. "That said, continuing efforts in enforcement, technology improvements, and changes in consumer behavior should ultimately lessen the number and impact of these calls."

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

Most Unwanted Robocall in July

July's most unwanted robocall campaign is yet another campaign estimated to have been the source of tens of millions of robocalls from tens of thousands of different numbers. As in this example, the callers are pushing tax debt reduction services. Like many other illegal telemarketing or scam calls, they appear to be violating a variety of telemarketing regulations, as they do not identify the entity making the call, do not provide a call back number, and appear to be calling people who did not give prior consent. Here is the call transcript:   

"This is a notification call from our Department of Tax and Financial Settlement Services. The purpose of this call is to inform all US citizens who may owe back taxes about the new back taxes compromise program. This program is part of the American rescue plan put into effect by the new administration and is now open for enrollment. The new compromise program will allow you to significantly reduce or eliminate your back taxes that can now be considered temporarily non-collectible. However you must select to enroll into the program now it is only open for a limited time. If you have over $10,000 on your back taxes please press one if you want us to put your number on our do not call list please press two".

July 2022 Saw a Big Decline in Scam Calls

July saw 430 million fewer scam and spam robocalls combined than June, a huge decline.  Together, there were roughly 1.9 billion likely unwanted robocalls in July.  

While fewer scam calls is clearly positive, there's a caveat.  A scam call is one that has clearly illegal or fraudulent behavior, such as a call from an enterprise imposter, or one that has a spoofed caller ID.  Stir/Shaken is reducing the number of robocall campaigns based on spoofed IDs, which drives down the number of obvious scam calls by making them harder to detect, since they appear to be telemarketing campaigns unless there is other evidence of fraud. 

As a result, it's critical to measure and focus on the overall number of spam and scam calls combined to track progress.

"Winners" in July 2022

The high-volume cities, area codes, and states in July were identical to recent past months, and they all showed significantly decreased volumes, generally in line with the decrease than the national trend for the month.

These data points are provided by YouMail, a free call protection app for mobile phones. YouMail recently 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:
Rohan Notaney for YouMail
Lumina Communications
[email protected]

SOURCE YouMail Inc.

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