4.9 Billion Robocalls in March Mark 6.8% Monthly Increase, Says YouMail Robocall Index

Americans received over 4.9 billion robocalls in March, a 6.8% increase in volume over February, following February’s dramatic 15.1% increase over January. In March, robocalls averaged 159.4 million calls/day and 1,844 calls/second. This is the highest number of monthly robocalls since November 2019, the last month that over 5 billion robocalls were recorded in a month. Americans received roughly 13.6 billion robocalls in the first quarter, on pace to reach over 54 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.

“Robocalls clearly are now back at pre-pandemic levels,” said YouMail CEO Alex Quilici. “It’s obviously disappointing that they are at these volumes despite major legislative, regulatory, enforcement and even technological efforts.”

March 2021 Saw Another Increase in Scam Calls

In March, combined scam calls and telemarketing calls accounted for roughly 64% of the month’s total robocall volume, a significant increase over the more typical 60% level we have been seeing in past months. In addition, the total number of scam and telemarketing calls jumped to over 3.1 billion calls for the month, a very substantial number of likely unwanted and/or illegal calls. This category also accounted for the rise in March versus February.

Top Illegal Robocalls in March 2021

Once again, the leading illegal types of robocalls in March continued to be those involving Car Warranties and Health-Related Scams. Both categories continued to grow in volume in March, with Warranty-related calls increasing by 70 million calls and Health-related calls increasing by over 80 million calls.

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“Winners” in March 2021

The cities and area codes with the highest volumes of robocalls were similar to February. At the state level, Florida passed California to be second most robocalled state, after Texas, which recorded the most total robocalls this month. Alabama and Louisiana become the top two states in terms of per-capita robocalls in March, passing Tennessee and South Carolina.

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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