Robocall scams are costing Americans billions – here’s how to protect yourself

• Nearly 1 in 3 Americans fell for a phone scam in 2020.
• Younger people are more prone to phone scams.
• The FCC recently made phone companies implement new safety measures.

Robocalls and phone scammers are not only annoying, they’re thieves.

Nearly one in three Americans said they fell for a phone scam in the past year, resulting in billions of dollars lost due to prank calls on landlines and cellphones.

New research by Truecaller found that more than 59 million Americans were affected by phone scammers — resulting in nearly $30 billion lost during the pandemic.

On average, Americans that fell for scams lost $502 last year — up from $351 in 2020. Of those, 60% of people reported robocalls coordinating the attack.

Popular scams include the “we’re calling about your car warranty” and the “urgent” call from the IRS. And they are happening to just about everyone.

Younger people fall for scams most often

Recent data by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) found that people ages 20-29 fell more often for fraud scams than older generations. 

Forty-six percent of men aged 35-44 fell for phony calls, according to the data. Interestingly, men are more likely to fall victim than women across all age brackets.

Thirty-one percent of women aged 18-34 fell for scams in the past 12 months, making them the largest female demographic to be robbed, compared to just 3% of women 65 and over.

Most scam calls happen on your cellphone

Since 2014, scam calls over mobile phones have nearly doubled; 85% of cell phone owners in 2021 experienced the problem. The incidence on landlines meantime has since decreased — 36% of people on landlines experienced it in 2014, now just 20% do — due largely to how popular cellphones have become compared to home lines.

YouMail, a robocall-prevention service, said 4.4 billion robocalls were made in April of this year alone — but cellphone companies were mandated to help recently by the FCC, which recently passed a new caller identification service on July 1 called STIR/SHAKEN.

The service is being used by the largest voice-service providers to help weed out phony calls and protect consumers from illegal phone number spoofing, which is when a scammer calls from a fake number designed to look local.

Phone carriers were given a deadline of June 30 by the FCC. Verizon, T-mobile and AT&T all met the deadline, according to Fox News.

“While there is no silver bullet in the endless fight against scammers, STIR/SHAKEN will turbo-charge many of the tools we use in our fight against robocalls: from consumer apps and network-level blocking, to enforcement investigations and shutting down the gateways used by international robocall campaigns,” said FCC Acting Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel in a statement.

“This is a good day for American consumers who – like all of us – are sick and tired of illegal spoofed robocalls.”

How to stop unwanted robocalls and texts

The FCC advises anyone wanting to stop pesky spam calls to protect themselves by not answering calls from unknown numbers. If you do answer, hang up immediately.

If an unknown call ever asks you to respond to a question, be sure to avoid them, especially those that can be answered with “yes.”

People receiving these calls should never give out personal information such as account numbers, social security numbers, family names, passwords or any other sensitive information.

For unwanted texts, never respond from questionable sources. Most mobile service providers can allow you to block the sender by forwarding unwanted texts to 7726 (or “SPAM”).