Robocalls have become an unavoidable part of daily life, flooding voicemails with unwanted messages from unknown numbers.
But there are steps you can take to reduce or eliminate these intrusive calls, and legislators are taking action to protect consumers.
"It's very frustrating to me because I'm in sales so I don't know if a customer is calling me or if it's, you know, one of the spammers. So, I'm missing calls now because I don't want to keep answering the phone for these random robocalls. So, it’s very frustrating," one person said.
How robocall blocking works
Matt Mizenko from Nomorobo, a company focused on blocking unwanted calls, explains how their technology works to identify and stop spam calls.
Nomorobo started in 2013 after it was entered into the FTC's robocall blocking challenge at the time. It won the competition as Best Overall Solution of blocking illegal robocalls.
General Manager Mizenko said, “We have a very large database. It's over 11 million numbers, I think, at this point in time.”
Nomorobo uses technology to intercept unwanted calls before they reach your phone. The number is checked against its global database and if it’s identified as a scam, the call will be sent to voicemail.
The company purchases inactive, and dormant, phone numbers to help identify spam callers.
"In general, every time one of those 300,000 numbers receives a call, it probably shouldn't be and that gives us a great indicator to protect our customers from that number," Mizenko said.
What you should do when robocalls come in
Experts recommend not answering calls, or declining calls, from unknown numbers, as simply picking up can signal to robocallers that your number is active.
"Just trying to ignore those calls altogether is good, because there are many cases in which just answering the call, [or declining it early] is a signal that, ‘hey, we connected to something out there that's live,’" Mizenko said.
Steps to block robocalls on your phone
For iPhone users:
- Go to Settings
- Select Phone
- Turn on "Silence Unknown Callers"
For Android users:
- Open the Phone app
- Click the three lines on the top left of the screen
- Go to Settings
- Tap "Caller ID & Spam"
- Enable "See caller and spam ID"
Legal action against robocallers
State attorneys general have formed an anti-robocall task force to combat the problem through legal channels.
"Just within the past couple of weeks, there were two actions, one from the AGs anti robocall Task Force, which shut down like 30 or 40 network operators and the FCC shut down another 180 something," Mizenko said. "The federal government and the state AGs are all trying to do their best. But again, there's so much of this going on, they have to be fairly strategic in the stuff that they're going after."
Nomorobo is also pursuing litigation against three debt collection companies, accusing them of violating the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. The company hopes this legal action could reshape robocall enforcement.
"We decided, let's take this on ourselves. Let's look for the worst of the worst, let's find these provable cases, let's look through our honeypot. Let's look through our database, and let's put our money where our mouth is," he said.
Many consumers believe stronger enforcement would provide significant relief from the constant barrage of unwanted calls.
This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.
