Consumers Received 6.7 Million Unwanted Calls in 2015, Whitepages Says
On average, cellphone users received 5.5 unwanted calls monthly in 2015, Whitepages found in its annual “State of the Unwanted Call” report, said a news release from the company. Fraudulent scam calls increased by 55 percent in 2015 over 2014,…
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and spam calls rose 22 percent. Of 1.2 billion calls scanned, Whitepages found 6.7 million were unwanted, with 74 percent of those unwanted calls categorized as spam and 26 percent as scams. The No. 1 scam of the year -- which grew by 248 percent in 2015 -- was the IRS scam, where someone calls claiming a consumer has a tax issue. The other biggest scams included "lucky winner," extortion, tech support and phishing. The top reported spam calls came from telemarketers, debt collectors, robocalls, and surveys, it said. Whitepages tracked 1.2 billion calls scanned since April through an app called Whitepages Caller ID to create the report. Another firm counted 980.8 million U.S. robocalls in November (see 1512100023).