(NEXSTAR) – Your phone ringing a little extra lately? You’re not alone. Americans got nearly 5 billion robocalls last month according to tracking by YouMail, a call screening and blocking service that tracks call volume.
In the first five months of the year, robocalls have gone up 11% when compared to the same period in 2024, the company’s latest analysis found. Last month averaged more than 1,800 robocalls per second.
The people most likely to have their phones ringing endlessly these days live outside the country’s biggest cities, the report found.
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The cities that saw the largest year-over-year jump in robocalls, according to YouMail, were:
- Southfield, Michigan: 151%
- Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin: 57%
- Jackson, Tennessee: 53%
- Victorville, California: 51%
- Longview, Texas: 49%
- Albany, Georgia: 49%
- Southhaven, Mississippi: 45%
- Mobile, Alabama: 42%
- Sharpsburg, Kentucky: 41%
- Martinsville, Virginia: 40%
- Otterville, Missouri: 39%
- Greenville, North Carolina: 39%
- Jackson, Mississippi: 38%
- Beaman, Iowa: 37%
- Danvers, Massachusetts: 35%
Larger cities, like Houston and Philadelphia, also saw increases in robocall volume, YouMail CEO Alex Quilici said, but the changes weren’t as dramatic.
“It’s really fascinating, the bigger cities are very similar to last year – slight increases or decreases,” he said. ”It’s the mid-tier cities, especially in the Midwest seeing big jumps.”
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While would-be scammers haven’t given up trying to contact you, it’s actually legal telemarketing callers that are driving much of the increase, according to Quilici.
It has to do with a Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rule change earlier this year. The agency was trying to make it so that when you give consent for a company to contact you, you’re only agreeing to be contacted by that specific company. But that rule was tossed out in court, and now companies can often share your contact information with others who may want it.
Quilici gave an example: “I was shopping for a car, and there’s five or six local dealers. And sure, the local dealers can call me. I’m happy to give consent for that, right? I want them to call me and tell me what they’ve got, but I didn’t mean to then give consent to insurance companies and everybody else out there.”
Most people don’t read the terms before clicking that little box online, so they don’t realize they’ve agreed to being blasted with marketing calls. Giving that consent also means they can be contacted even if they’re on the federal Do Not Call Registry.
Thanks to another recent court ruling, the FCC has also had a harder time fining wrongdoers, Quilici explained.
Other agencies, like the Department of Justice, may pick up the mantle and try to go after excessive telemarketing calls, spam texts and scammers, he said. But in the meantime, we may be stuck screening more and more unwanted calls.
