In the News

Robocalls dropped by 30% in April because of the pandemic

May 5, 2020 CNN

One of the biggest consumer headaches has eased up at least in part due to the pandemic.Americans experienced a drop in the amount of robocalls flooding their phones in April, helped byinternational call centers being shut down during the global pandemic and government efforts to stop Covid-19-related scams.The number of robocalls made to US phone numbers last month was the lowest in two years, according to new data provided to CNN Business from YouMail, a robocall-prevention service that tracks robocall traffic across the country. This includes both scam and legitimate calls, such as payment reminders from banks.YouMailsaidAmericans received about 2.86 billion calls in April, a 30% drop from the month before and down 40% from February. At their peak in October 2019, about 5.66 billion robocalls were placed to the US in a one-month period.The decline coincides with the shuttering of call centers in countries such as India, Pakistan and the Philippines, where workerswho are placing unwanted robocalls don’t own laptops to support working from home and some have lost their jobs or been furloughed.