After a year of relief, robocalls are back up to pre-pandemic levels. YouMail CEO Alex Quilici explains last year. "During the pandemic, call centers have closed or dramatically reduce their capacity. If you don't have a call center there, you have nobody to answer the phone with the listener "presses 1" --- so there's no point in making the robocall." He says Call Centers are trying to make up for lost time and this year Americans should receive over 51 billion robocalls - 7 billion more than last year.
Americans Receiving Billions of Scam Calls
Quilici says there are two types of robocalls. "Fraud - people who are trying to scam you directly. For example, they pretend to be from the IRS. But there's also a kind of call we call an 'illegal lead generation call.' They will send you to whomever has something they are trying to sell."
Now that the call centers are back up - here's Quilici's advice. "You should be running a robocall protection app on your phone in the same way you put anti-virus software on your computer. At YouMail we have a good one, but there are others as well.
photo: Getty