Each American Received About 13 Robocalls Last Month, 50 So Far in 2018
Americans were harassed by more than 4 billion robocalls in May according to data collected by YouMail. More than 30 billion robocalls have been made in the United States in the first five months of the year, easily a record…
Some 4.1 billion robocalls were placed in the United States last month, a total roughly equal to 12.5 calls for each of 324 million Americans. That’s the highest monthly total yet recorded by robocall indexer YouMail. For the first five months of 2018, Americans have had to suffer more than 16 billion robocalls, more than half the total of 30.5 billion such calls made in 2017.
Robocalls generated the most consumer complaints last year to both the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Communications Commission, according to a YouMail blog post.
In the month of May, robocall number 800-955-6600 made nearly 40 million calls. The YouMail index assigns a medium risk to the number and identifies the source as “Capital One Payments/Collections.” Of the top 20 robocall numbers, nearly half (nine) were suspected of being health insurance spam calls. A total of seven were related to payments/debt, and the other four were related to cable company (Comcast) debt collection, a charity scam, job availability and credit card interest rates.
If you live in Atlanta’s 404 area code and think you got a lot of robocalls, you’re right. More than 78.5 million robocalls were placed to the 404 area code last month, a month-over-month increase of 17%. Residents of Charlotte, North Carolina’s, 704 area code fared almost as poorly, receiving a total of nearly 71 million robocalls last month, up 141% from the April total.
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Here are the 10 area codes with the dubious distinction of being the plumpest May targets for robocalls. We’ve included the number of calls received and the month-over-month increase.
- 404, Atlanta, Georgia: 78.57 million; 17%
- 704, Charlotte, North Carolina: 70.73 million; 141%
- 214, Dallas, Texas: 58.88 million; 20%
- 832, Houston, Texas: 58.7 million; 19%
- 678, Atlanta, Georgia: 56.1 million; 24%
- 954, Miami, Florida: 53.94 million; 32%
- 917, New York City: 46.21 million; 17%
- 310, Los Angeles: 45.66 million; 23%
- 773, Chicago: 39.2 million; 9%
- 347, New York City: 37.65 million; 15%
Visit the YouMail website for more information and an interactive map that shows the number of robocalls by area code.
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Paul Ausick has been writing for 247Wallst.com for more than a decade. He has written extensively on investing in the energy, defense, and technology sectors. In a previous life, he wrote technical documentation and managed a marketing communications group in Silicon Valley.
He has a bachelor's degree in English from the University of Chicago and now lives in Montana, where he fishes for trout in the summer and stays inside during the winter.
