Report Confirms It: We Get a Lot of Robocalls

Americans got 26.3B of them last year, up from 18B in 2017
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted Jan 30, 2019 2:20 PM CST
Robocalls Were Up 46% Last Year
This Tuesday, Aug. 1, 2017, file photo, shows a call log displayed via an AT&T app on a cellphone in Orlando, Fla.   (AP Photo/John Raoux, File)

If it seems like you're getting a lot more robocalls than you used to—it's because you are, the Washington Post reports. A report released Tuesday by spam-monitoring service Hiya found that Americans received about 26.3 billion robocalls last year. That's an astonishing 46% increase from 2017, when the number was 18 billion. Some robocalls, like those that come from banks or those to notify you of a package delivery, are legitimate. But so many of the calls are spam calls that Hiya, which analyzed activity from 450,000 of its app users, found only about half of cellphone calls were actually answered. (Here's how robocallers make money even when calls go unanswered.)

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