Robocalls jumped 60 percent in the U.S. last year and scammers are finding more ways to make money

January 4, 2019

It’s not your imagination. You are getting bombarded with robocalls.

Robocalling, a practice where marketers send automated voice messages to thousands of phones at once, surged 60 percent in the U.S. last year to 48 billion calls, according to preliminary year-end data from YouMail, a robocall management company that tracks the volume of calls.

“Scam calls have been increasing very steadily, and it’s driving people to not answer their phone,” said YouMail CEO Alex Quilici. “It’s driving people to not answer their phone and it’s kind of created this death spiral of phone calls as the robocallers ramp up their efforts, and the legitimate roboccalls try harder to get through…”