CLEVELAND, Ohio — While many phone companies aren’t doing as much as they could to block robocalls and identify spoofed calls, consumers also aren’t doing their part. For starters, tens of millions of consumers could block most robocalls to their home lines but don’t.
A company called Nomorobo was launched six years ago in response to a quest by the Federal Trade Commission for someone to create technology to identify and block unwanted, annoying and sometimes costly robocalls. Aaron Foss, who has a master’s degree in technology management from the Rochester Institute of Technology, came up with a way. To date, Nomorobo boasts that it’s blocked 1.5 billion calls.
The service is free for consumers with home phones and $1.99 per month for cellphones. But it generally works only for home phone lines that come through cable or internet lines; ones that rely on old copper wiring aren’t compatible. About half of consumers have a home line today. The majority of home phones come through cable or internet lines.
Even though Nomorobo is free for home customers, only a fraction of those eligible have enrolled, Foss said. The company is blocking robocalls for about 3.5 million home phone and cellphone customers, he said. Foss doesn’t release the number of business customers.
The 10-person company makes its money from business and mobile customers; it offers the service at no cost to people with home lines as a community service and to help its robocall-detection analytics.
Most phone companies aren’t good at promoting Nomorobo. Besides that, who knows why more people don’t sign up.
Bob Bugoci of Brecksville said he’d heard of Nomorobo before but didn’t enroll until January, when he read a news item about how easy it is to sign up. (You do need to use a computer to enroll. Go to nomorobo.com.)
Bugoci was getting maybe a dozen robocalls a day, including four or five early every morning. Immediately after he enrolled, a robocall tried to come through. “Oh my gosh! It rang once and was gone. We have had many since and all go away,” he said. “Why didn’t I do this sooner?”
Foss said robocallers and scam artists are getting more sophisticated: We’ve all received calls that look like they’re coming from a neighbor or a government office or a business in town. The goal of these spoofed calls is to make you comfortable enough or curious enough to pick up calls that could be originating halfway around the world.
In fact, many consumers make the mistake of answering robocalls, which make up 36% of all calls, often because they’re afraid of missing a call they want.
Some calls now are designed to sound like they’re coming from customer service offices, Foss said, complete with the background buzz of voices you’d expect to hear. In reality, the robotic-sounding voice and background noise is all being generated by a computer. Known as “avatar calls,” he said they’re "just good enough” to fool people.
Foss said he thinks robocalls are leveling off but he doesn’t think the need for call-filtering and call-blocking services will go away. It’s like someone who has gone on medicine to deal with something like a thyroid issue or high blood pressure. You can’t go off the medication or else the illness will come back, Foss said. Likewise, phone companies and consumers can’t take their foot off the gas or robocalls will surge again.