June was a good month for those who don’t like robocalls, with a decline of 7.9% from May 2024 and 15.3% from June 2023. The total for the month was just over 4.1 billion robocalls, according to YouMail.
Using a wider lens, the company counted 25.5 billion robocalls in 2024’s first six months, which was almost 10% fewer than in the first half of 2023, when 28.3 billion robocalls were tallied.
YouMail, which provides app-based call protection services for mobile phones, found that the density of calls decreased. In June, there were 137.5 million robocalls per day, which equates to 1,592 per second. That’s down 4.5% from May, which averaged 144.5 million robocalls per day and 1,673 per second.
The composition of the June 2024 robocalls showed a significant shift from the prior month. There was a 7.8% increase in telemarketing calls and a nearly 11% decline in notification calls. Scam calls and payment reminders remained almost unchanged, according to YouMail.
The totals per category for June: Notifications dropped 10.8% to reach 1.09 billion robocalls (26% of total); payment reminders decreased slightly to 0.95 billion calls (23% of total); telemarketing calls increased 7.8% to 1.43 billion (35% of total); and scams increased just slightly to 0.65 billion (16% of total).
Addressing the difference in robocalls in 2024 as compared to 2023, YouMail CEO Alex Quilici said, “It’s great news that we’re seeing the robocall volume down nearly 10% so far in 2024 versus the first half of 2023. Everyone’s efforts — from carriers to regulators to enforcement to consumers who are better protecting themselves — all of that work is clearly making a difference.”
The company said that the most problematic calls during June related to consumer debt.
Earlier this month, a report analyzing Federal Trade Commission numbers found that 33% of complaints lodged in 2022 related to calls in which people posed as an authority figure in order to steal identity information. The total number of related complaints was 289,048.
