Just Under 4 Billion Robocalls in May Mark 9.9% Monthly Drop, Says YouMail Robocall Index

Americans received just under 4 billion robocalls in May, a 9.9% decrease in volume over April, marking the second straight decrease in monthly volumes and the lowest levels of robocalls this year. In May, robocalls averaged 128.7 million calls/day and 1,490 calls/second, down from April’s 147.6 million calls/day and 1,708 calls/second.

Despite this decline in the pace of robocalls, Americans have received just under 22 billion robocalls in the first five months of the year, on pace to hit over 52 billion robocalls for the year.

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These latest monthly figures are provided by YouMail, a totally free robocall blocking app and call protection service for mobile phones. These figures are determined by extrapolating from the robocall traffic attempting to get through to YouMail’s millions of active users.

“It’s great to see a second straight month of declining robocall traffic, but we aren’t getting too excited about the decline,” said YouMail CEO Alex Quilici. “We believe the decline is due to continuing and expanding lockdowns in India based on the prevalence of Covid-19 there, which once again has closed or reduced the capacity of call centers.”

May 2021 Saw A Big Decrease In Scam Calls

In May, combined scam calls and telemarketing calls accounted for roughly 63% of the month’s total robocall volume, similar to the April results.  However, the number of scam and telemarketing calls declined to 2.4 billion calls for the month. This is a very substantial number of likely unwanted and/or illegal calls, but it reflects a decline of 19% in scam calls and 8% in telemarketing calls.

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Top Illegal Robocalls in May 2021

Once again, the leading illegal types of robocalls in April continued to be those involving Car Warranties and Health-Related Scams. Both categories shrunk very significantly in volume versus April, with both having roughly 100 million fewer calls in the month.

“Winners” in May 2021

In May, we recorded three changes in the cities and area codes registering the highest volumes of robocalls over April. Washington, DC replaced Memphis, Tennessee as the second most robocalled city on a per capita basis. California surpassed Florida as the second most robocalled state. And South Carolina and Louisiana replaced Alabama and Tennessee as the states with the most robocalls per person.

These data are provided by YouMail, a free call protection app for mobile phones. YouMail recently won the American Business Awards’ Gold Stevie Award for Technical Innovation of the Year, and the YouMail app was named the nation’s best robocall-blocking solution in a competition organized by Geoffrey Fowler of the Washington Post.

YouMail blocks unwanted robocallers by making sure the user’s phone doesn’t ring, and then plays an out-of-service message that leads them to think they dialed an invalid number. YouMail identifies problematic numbers and robocalls using a combination of its recently patented audio fingerprinting technology, call patterns, and consumer feedback.

YouMail provides the YouMail Robocall Index to estimate robocall volume across the country and for specific area codes every month. This estimate is formed by extrapolating from the behavior of the billions of calls YouMail has handled for its users, and these statistics are regularly cited by the FCC as a definitive source for national data trends.

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