Industry experts say robocalls are way down scam calls as well as nagging from your credit-card company to pay your bill. The coronavirus pandemic has inflicted millions of job losses and scammers have not been immune. YouMail which offers a robocall-blocking service says 2.9 billion robocalls were placed in April in the U.S. down from 4.1 billion in March and 4.8 billion in February. That’s a daily average of 97 million calls in April down from 132 million in March and 166 million in April. The main reason: many global call centers have closed or are operating with fewer workers said YouMail CEO Alex Quilici. While it may be odd to think of scams being run out of call centers rather than a dark creepy basement or a garage that’s often the case particularly in countries such as India and the Philippines experts said. After a lockdown order went into effect in India in late March“we saw the volume of calls basically half the next day ” Quilici said. That means scammers will probably be back in force once the call centers come back online. Stepped-up enforcement from industry groups and the U.S. government could nibble around the edges of those call volumes when the scammers are back however. In recent months federal agencies have focused on going after the small telecom providers that were allowing calls from COVID-19 scammers citing the urgency of the pandemic.
