Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984
By next year, nearly half of the mobile phone calls we get will be scams, according to a new report from First Orion, a company that provides calls management and protection for T-Mobile, MetroPCs, Virgin Mobile and others.
The percentage of scam calls in US mobile traffic increased from 3.7 percent last year to 29.2 percent this year, and it's predicted to rise to 44.6 percent in 2019, First Orion said in a press release Wednesday.
The most popular method scammers use to try to get people to pick up the phone is called "neighborhood spoofing," where they disguise their numbers with a local prefix so people presume the calls are safe to pick up, First Onion said. Third-party call blocking apps may help protect consumers from known scam numbers, but they can't tell if a scammer hijacks someone's number and uses it for scam calls.
"Year after year, the scam call epidemic bombards consumers at record-breaking levels, surpassing the previous year and scammers increasingly invade our privacy at new extremes," First Orion CEO Charles Morgan said in the press release.
Source: https://www.cnet.com/news/almost-half-of-us-cell-phone-calls-will-be-scams-by-next-year-says-report/
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Saturday September 15 2018, @11:28PM (2 children)
I *already* get 90% scam calls. I block everything not in my phonebook and I *still* get what looks like a local number.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday September 17 2018, @06:41AM (1 child)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Monday September 17 2018, @09:12AM
I suspect the scam calling is done from "abroad" , so they are simply skirting any laws.
and of course, the telcos are complicit.
and the many layers of "human data" are being resold all over the place.
Take your pick....I'm sure there are more issues...