CLEVELAND, Ohio – “We’ve been trying to reach you concerning your car’s extended warranty.”
This is the beginning of an all-too-common robocall. Or a prerecorded phone call. Or software that dials the numbers using a database or randomly dialing numbers. By one estimate, there’s been close to 1.8 billion such calls in Ohio already this year.
Some of these calls are wanted, like a reminder of a doctor’s appointment. Many are not. For most people, these unwanted calls are a giant nuisance. In the worst cases, they can be costly, or scam an unsuspecting person into sharing personal information.
“That tends to be people with lower socioeconomic status and older people who are more trusting and respectful,” says Marc Dann, Ohio’s former attorney general now in private practice. “Being respectful isn’t necessarily a strength in trying to deter people from giving you unsolicited robocalls because they’ll see that as an opportunity.”
Ohioans last month received more than 300 million robocalls, costing them more than $181 million, according to Robokiller, a service that specializes in blocking unwanted calls and text messages. Among those, 32.4 million calls went to Cleveland. While that’s a lot, it’s not as bad as Southeast Ohio’s 740 area code, identified by Robokiller as the fifth most targeted area nationally, with 55 million calls.
The projected 3.6 billion robocalls Ohioans will receive this year is up slightly from the last couple of years,…
