Hey guys, have you ever received a scam phone call? Well, if you haven’t then you probably don’t own a phone because I’ll tell you, in the United States we do receive billions of these calls every single year and unfortunately they are hard to stop. In fact, I just got one now while typing!
But, the Feds have recently stepped in. They just shut down three of the big alleged perpetrators based out of New York City and that’s good news because that cut down a little bit of this kind of phone traffic. Unfortunately we are still facing an uphill battle against these perpetrators who are usually hiding their operations overseas. For comparison, in the month of June alone 94 schemes were stopped by the Federal Trade Commission, resulting in a reduction of about 3 billion annoying phone calls. It sounds like a lot, but it’s a small number compared to the estimated 29 billion scam phone calls Americans receive each year, accounting for nearly half of total cell phone calls.
You can probably guess where these calls come from, places like the Philippines, Mexico, Guatemala, Nigeria, India – outside of U.S. jurisdiction which makes them difficult to trace. They’re easy to operate and extremely lucrative and sometimes setting up shop simply means some guys getting together in an apartment with laptops and making millions of calls for practically nothing, using scripts and methods that are easy to find and learn on the Internet.
The Take Away
The good news is that like most things, there’s an “App for that!”
One of the best is called NoMoRobo (short for “no more robocallers”) that automatically blocks telemarketing and scam callers on your cell phone. The App is free and available for Android and Apple devices.
Since it’s so easy and lucrative, phone scammers are not going away any time soon. Use common sense to keep these guys out of your life and bank account.
Stay safe out there.
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