(NewsNation) — In November alone, Americans received more than 50 billion unsolicited phone calls and text messages.
Many of these are geared toward scamming people out of their money — just in time for the holidays.
According to the free robocall blocking app YouMail, in November alone, Americans received nearly 5 billion robocalls, making for a whopping total of 46 billion robocalls so far this year.
Some of them are actually legitimate — your doctor’s appointment, bill reminders and delivery messages — but more than half are unwanted telemarketing scams costing Americans roughly $30 billion a year.
“There’s a whole bunch of scam calls now pretending to be major U.S. corporations,” Alex Quilici, CEO of YouMail, said. “For example, pretending to be Amazon or pretending to be Google … or a message saying there’s an iPhone purchase for $1,299 on your credit card.”
Now, when the person who answers the phone presses 1, they’ll be connected to someone doing everything they can to get a credit card number and identity information, Quilici said.
Giulia Porter, vice president of RoboKiller, another app that blocks robocalls, said it’s estimated that Americans are losing up to $1,200 per text or scam call.
Adding to this problem are robotexts.
According to Robokiller, Americans received a record-shattering 47 billion spam text messages during the…
