103 Million Bay Area Robocalls In October

BAY AREA — Oh, PG&E. Thanks to the Public Safety Power Shutoffs in October, the utility company managed to be the number one robocaller in the San Francisco Bay Area in October. But PG&E was hardly alone. More than 103 million calls were placed to Bay Area phone numbers, or more than 12 per person, per day. Even more astounding, that number is a 23 percent increase over the previous month.

Nationwide, 5.7 billion robocalls were placed in October, according to YouMail’s most recent robocall index. The October tally is up significantly from September, when about 4.5 billion robocalls were detected, according to Alex Quilici, the CEO of the robocall blocking and tracking company YouMail.

The previous high was in March, when 5.2 billion robocalls were reported. Why the big jump? The answer is simple, Quilici told Patch. The people behind robocalls are getting smarter.

“It has been declining,” he said. “We think it’s a couple of things. It’s harder to get through because of blocking apps, so they have to keep making more calls to get through. And a lot of people respond to them.”

In the Bay Area, these were the Top 10 robocallers in October:

1. 800-743-5002, PG&E, Power Outage Alert
2. 510-379-9303, Twilio, Substitute Teacher Alert
3. 510-502-0533, Unknown Robocaller
4. 800-955-6600, Capital One, Bank/Credit Card Payment Reminder
5. 800-266-2278, Comcast, Customer Call
6. 888-934-6489, Comcast, Service Appointment Reminder
7. 800-692-7753, Apple, Apple iCloud Scam
8. 562-401-5940, Frontier, Prescription Shipped Alert
9. 877-647-8551, Wells Fargo, Bank/Credit Card Payment Reminder
10. 713-568-6986, Prison Call Payment, Prison Call Consent

Nationally, about 47 percent of robocalls were scam calls, according to the report. The rest were legitimate — 11 percent were telemarketers, 20 percent were payment reminders, and 22 percent were alerts and other reminders.

Related: Scammers Are Scaring, Extorting Millions From Your Aging Parents

Many robocalls direct people to press “1” on their phone keypads if they want more information, or to press “9” to be taken off the calling list. Both actions are counterproductive, signaling to the caller that a real person has been reached, Quilici said.

“It’s pointless to press a number,” he said. “It just tells them it’s an active number, so you’re going to get more calls.”

The 10 cities that received the most robocalls in October were:

1. Atlanta: 221,085,300 robocalls, up 27 percent from September
2. Dallas: 205,081,200 robocalls, up 24 percent from September
3. New York City: 175,637,400 robocalls, up 21 percent from September
4. Los Angeles: 175,623,400 robocalls, up 29 percent from September
5. Chicago: 171,866,400 robocalls, up 23 percent from September
6. Houston: 169,378,100 robocalls, up 25 percent from September
7. Baltimore: 122,852,700 robocalls, up 23 percent from September
8. Newark, New Jersey: 112,404,500 robocalls, up 26 percent from September
9. Phoenix: 108,903,500 robocalls, up 26 percent from September
10. San Francisco Bay area: 103,622,700 robocalls, up 23 percent from September

The calls aren’t just annoying. The blocking and tracking firm Truecaller estimates that consumers have lost $10.5 billion to phone scams so far this year, with an average loss of $244.

Both the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives have passed legislation cracking down on annoying and unsolicited robocalls, but the two bills need to be reconciled before sending them to President Trump for his signature.

The bills give Federal Communications Commission regulators stronger enforcement tools. The House version requires phone carriers to implement caller identification technology, and it requires the FCC to report annually to Congress on the state of robocalls.

— Patch editors Bea Karnes and Beth Dalbey contributed to this story