Americans Continue to Receive High Number of Robocalls

Many might come to a conclusion that STIR/SHAKEN regulations appear to be making little impact as the number of robocalls received by Americans increased from May to June. More enforcement to slow down robocalls is needed, but the fact is STIR/SHAKEN does not stop robocalls because that alone is an impossible task.

STIR/SHAKEN allows for the authentication and verification of caller ID information for calls carried over IP networks that will let Americans know the caller ID information they receive is accurate and will allow voice service providers to provide helpful information to their consumers about which calls they should avoid answering.  Carriers can also block robocalls that haven’t been certified – which is really the ultimate goal – but that’s clearly not a widespread tactic yet, and illegal robocallers, like other bad actors, are constantly evolving their tactics to circumvent solutions designed to stop them.

In June, Americans received over 4.3 billion robocalls, which is an 8.5% increase from May, according to YouMail’s Robocall Index. June saw over 400 million more scam and spam robocalls combined, but about 100 million fewer notifications calls. Together, there were roughly 2.4 billion likely unwanted robocalls in June.

The YouMail Robocall Index is used to estimate robocall volume across the country and for specific area codes every month by extrapolating from the behavior of the billions of calls YouMail handles.

"Robocallers continue to evolve their techniques, and it's clear that more efforts in enforcement, technology and changing consumer behavior are going to be required to make continued progress," said YouMail CEO Alex Quilici.

Solutions to block robocalls include using the phone carrier’s anti-robocall tools and install more defenses against robocalls.

For instance, YouMail will block unwanted robocalls 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. This is achieved by YouMail identifying problematic numbers and robocalls using a combination of its recently patented audio fingerprinting technology, call patterns and consumer feedback.

Edited by Erik Linask