There is a constant irritating saying within my household that occurs almost every day. Whenever my phone rings, and I don’t answer, my wife accuses me of having a girlfriend who must be calling. The response is always the same, “yeah, good ole spam likely calling”. Spam calls have become a widespread nuisance to a vast number of people. These unsolicited calls using disguised caller ID have a common goal: to sell products, try to gain personal information, or commit fraud. This has caused such a personal issue that nobody wants to answer their calls and lets every call go to voicemail. What happens when there is an emergency with family, friends, or work? And you don’t check your voicemails until hours later. The volume of robocalls have surged, with Americans receiving an average of 2.56 billion robocalls per month as of 2025. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has identified unwanted calls, particularly illegal robocalls and spoofed calls (when a caller’s identity is falsified), as a top consumer compliant.
While some telemarketing calls can be legal, most spam calls are illegal. Under the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the Telephone Consumer Protection act prohibits unsolicited telemarketing calls to numbers on the National Do Not Call Registry, which bans robocalls without the recipient’s written consent. Consumers can register their phone numbers on the Nation Do Not Call Registry to reduce unwanted telemarketing calls. Unfortunately, the registry has limitations that often leave users still receiving spam calls from scammers. There are exemptions for political and charitable organizations which may end up being scammers themselves. Or the scammers may end up completely ignoring the registry and do not adhere to the law by making continued unsolicited calls.
People always want to know how they ended up receiving so many spam calls. What they do not know is their phone number is shared, collected, or exposed to telemarketers and automated calling systems. Signing up for free trails of contests or newsletters often leads to your number being sold to third-party marketers. Phone numbers listed publicly or submitted online can be harvested by automated systems for marketing campaigns. One important aspect to know, if you do answer a spam call, your number is now confirmed and active, leading to more unwanted calls. A common trick of spam calls is a tactic known as “neighbor spoofing” where the incoming number has the same area code and prefix as your own number. This makes the calls appear local and the chance increases you will answer it.
Besides the National Do Not Call Registry (donotcall.com), there are other ways of protecting yourself from these unwelcome calls. Your cell phone, rather you have an Android or iPhone, does have built-in call-blocking features. Go to your settings and select Block / Report Spam. Sadly, this only blocks the one number. Many spam calls are robocalls that use a computerized autodialer to deliver prerecorded messages from multiple phone numbers. Also, your phone carriers offer various spam blocking services with advance filtering and blocking capabilities, such as ATT Activearmor, Verizon Call Filter, and T-Mobile Scam Shield. Lastly, you can report these unwanted calls to the FTC at reportfraud.ftc.gov. Authorities can act against spammers. But if you’re like me, though annoying it takes time and effort away from my schedule I don’t feel like dealing with.
Even though there are limitations to current technologies and ongoing efforts from regulators on spam, you can alleviate this by leveraging available tools to reduce the number of unwanted calls you receive. These calls are improbable to completely stop due to their ability to evolving tactics and technology. They rely on using psychological manipulation. Spam is a growing wave of financial fraud, identity theft, and phishing attacks.
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