Many of us are already conditioned to ignore phone calls from unknown numbers.
A new study seems to validate that M.O. By next year, nearly half of the mobile phone calls we get will be scams, according to a new report from First Orion, a company that provides calls management and protection for T-Mobile, MetroPCs, Virgin Mobile and others.
Third-party call blocking apps may help protect consumers from known scam numbers, but they can't tell if a scammer hijacks someone's number and uses it for scam calls.
First Orion in April testified before the US House Committee on Digital Commerce and Consumer Protection about combating robocalls, scam calls and caller ID spoofing with technologies.
The company works with carrier giants like T-Mobile to alert consumers of scam calls by displaying "Scam Likely" as caller ID on their phones.
"Scammers relentlessly inundate mobile phones with increasingly convincing and scary calls," said Gavin Macomber, senior vice president of marketing at First Orion, in an email statement.
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