February was another bad month in terms of the scourge of robocalls, which remain a pretty out-of-control problem in the US.
The total number of such calls received nationwide last month was almost 5 billion, which was just shy of January’s all-time high of 5.2 billion. While last month did represent a slight decline, to put into context how big a problem that number still is consider that February’s 4.9 billion robocalls equals almost 175 million received every single day during February — which likewise equates to 2,024 every single second during the month.
That data comes from YouMail, a free robocall blocking solution for mobile phones.
“The robocall problem shows no signs of letting up, as there continue to be more and more robocalls every day,” said YouMail CEO Alex Quilici in a news release about the February figures. “This is despite regulators, carriers, and others all working hard to try to make a dent in the problem.”
There are a few different kinds of calls that can fall into the overall bucket of “robocalls.” They include telemarketer cold-calls, for example, the number of which in February hit 733 million and comprised 15 percent of the month’s overall total. The majority of the calls, though, can be classified as outright scams, according to the YouMail figures.
The United States is now getting #robocalls at a pace of over 2,000 /second, with roughly half of them scams. Pure insanity. https://t.co/bzVlrSufO9 pic.twitter.com/hz8Upz119v
— YouMail (@youmail) March 7, 2019
During February, almost 2.3 billion scam calls of some kind were received in the US. That comprised almost 46 percent of all robocalls for the month. The most frequent kinds of robocall scams during February included health-related and health insurance scams, interest rate scams, “easy money” scams, student loan scams and search engine-related scams.
If you’re curious about what part of the US tends to get the most robocalls, the South continues to be the most targeted. Per YouMail, the US city that gets the most robocalls? Atlanta, with a total of just over 200 million during February. The city with the most robocalls per person is Baton Rouge, Louisiana, which statistically got 53 robocalls per person last month, while Atlanta’s 404 area code was the heaviest-hit area code, with 87.8 million calls.
Looking at this data from the state level, the state with the most robocalls received during February was Texas, with 552 million calls. Louisiana was the state with the most robocalls per person, at 32.5 calls for each resident in February.
