Your cell phone is your lifeline to friends, family and work. But lately, a lot of us have been inundated with calls for personal loans we don’t need or want.
Consumers across the country continue to face a barrage of relentless automated spam calls offering unwanted financial products.
The Federal Trade Commission is working to crack down on illegal spam calls, many of which are believed to originate overseas. Industry experts explain that scammers compile extensive contact lists using personal information harvested from data breaches and public record scraping.
Garrett Kistler has been dealing with non-stop spam calls for months regarding automated personal loan approvals.
Kistler, who has never applied for a loan and does not want one, believes the calls are AI-generated scams.
“Almost four or five times a day, sometimes even up to 10 times a day,” Kistler said. The influx of unwanted communications has created regular disruptions to his everyday schedule. “And sometimes that actually leads me to miss important calls,” Kistler said.
Despite trying to trace where the calls originate, Kistler has found that the automated dials continue without slowing down.
“Most programs would probably say stop after reaching out, you know, a dozen times, right? But this clearly is not the case. It just keeps going and going and going,” Kistler said.
Patrick Crotty, a senior attorney at the National Consumer Law Center who specializes in telephone consumer protection, explained the psychological tactics behind these robocalls.
“What they’re trying to do is get around your natural defenses,” Crotty said.
According to Crotty, scammers acquire phone numbers through multiple avenues, including data breaches and public records.
“That data can oftentimes be scraped from public facing websites and used to build these. Lead lists, which can be used for scams,” Crotty said.
While reporting spam calls directly to service providers can help raise awareness, Crotty acknowledged that doing so will not necessarily stop the calls from coming in. Mobile users who receive spam text messages can forward them to 7726, an industry-standard spam reporting hotline. Smartphone owners can also adjust their device settings to automatically screen unknown numbers.
To help mitigate unwanted calls, wireless companies have introduced free options for subscribers.
“All of the major mobile providers will give you a call blocking app with basic functionality at no charge,” Crotty said. Utilizing these applications typically decreases the frequency of phone rings, although automated voicemails may still deliver to user inboxes.
Consumer protection experts advise individuals to never answer calls from unknown numbers, refrain from calling back after receiving a suspicious voicemail and hang up immediately without sharing personal information if a scammer reaches them.
Experts also recommend that consumers regularly inspect their credit history for free at AnnualCreditReport.com to check for unauthorized activity.
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