ROBOCALL STUDY: ANSWER, DON’T ANSWER – THEY’LL KEEP COMING

The Robocall Observatory at North Carolina State University just released the results of an 11-month study into all the unsolicited phone calls they received from February 2019 to January 2020. They monitored every phone call received by over 66,000 phone lines in their telephone security lab. They received 1.48 million unsolicited phone calls over the course of the study. Some of these calls were answered, while others they let ring. Here is what they found:
– More than 80% of robocalls come from fake numbers.
– Answering these calls or not has no effect on how many more you’ll get. The weekly volume of robocalls remained constant throughout the study.
– The main types of robocalling campaigns were about student loans, health insurance, Google business listings, general financial fraud, and a long-running Social Security scam.
– More than 80% of robocalls use fake or short-lived phone numbers to place their unwanted calls. Using these phone numbers makes it much more difficult to identify and prosecute unlawful robocallers.
– Some operations impersonated government agencies using messages in English and Mandarin to threaten victims with dire consequences. These messages target vulnerable populations, including immigrants and seniors.
– Phone service providers CAN identify the true source of a robocall using a time-consuming, manual process called traceback. They could identify large-scale robocalling operations. They could then block or shut down these operations and protect their subscribers from scams and unlawful telemarketing. THEY JUST DON’T.
* We’ve been calling and calling the school to try and get somebody to talk about this study, but for some reason they don’t answer.
* 1.48 million robocalls in one year is 4,054 robocalls each day. Seems kind of low.
* It’s nice of them to have done this study, although now North Carolina State University has 34,000 Google business listings.
* On the bright side, you can put your number on the national Do Not Call Registry. You can also flap your arms and try to fly to the moon.
* The irony of this whole thing is, all the students who helped perform the study will be graduating and they only jobs they can get are with robocall companies.