Nearly half of all cellphone calls will be scams in 2019, new report says
Oct 2, 2018, 6:30 PM
(Pexels Photo)
(Pexels Photo)
We live in some scam-filled times.
A new report revealed that about half of all cellphone calls next year will come from scammers.
What it says: The report, done by First Orion, a company that offers caller ID and call-blocking data, projected that there will be an increase in spam calls next year, according to The Washington Post.
The report — called the 2018 Scam Call Trends and Projects Report — said spam calls represented 3.7 percent of calls in 2017. But, in 2018, that number has jumped to 29 percent.
Next year, spam calls will represent 45 percent of all calls, the report said.
“Year after year, the scam-call epidemic bombards consumers at record-breaking levels, surpassing the previous year, and scammers increasingly invade our privacy at new extremes,” said Charles Morgan, the chief executive and head data scientist of First Orion, in a blog post last week.
Whom they target: The report said scam calls will target immigrant communities. Those calls will take advantage of people’s lack of knowledge of the U.S. legal system, according to Inc.
Why it matters: Robocalls and scam calls have been rather popular in Utah and the U.S. this year.
The Federal Trade Commission released a report in 2018 that found Americans filed 4.5 million complaints about robocalls, which is a jump from the 3.4 million who did the same in 2016.
As I wrote about in March, more than 187 million robocalls were made in Utah area codes in 2017. That’s a jump from the 158 million made in 2016.
About 66,000 of those calls came from Utah alone, according to the FTC.
Solutions: First Orion’s solution is to sell caller ID and call-blocking technologies to phone companies like T-Mobile, Boost Mobile and others.
The Verge writer Chris Welch offered eight tips for stopping robocalls, including downloading apps such as Nomorobo, RoboKiller and Hiya.
