The congressional effort and FCC enforcement of STIR/SHAKEN have not reduced robocalls and scam calls in the US, according to a recent YouMail report.
In May 2025, there was a 7.3% increase compared to May 2024. According to the monthly report, there have been approximately 23.8 billion robocalls in the first five months of this year, marking an increase of about 11% over the same period in 2024. In May, there was an average of 165 million robocalls made each day, which breaks down to about 1,803 robocalls per second.
The report singled out rural communities as seeing some of the largest increases regarding this type of unwanted voice traffic. States singled out included, Iowa, Mississippi, Wisconsin, Kentucky, Missouri, and Virginia as areas that received a major uptick in scam calls.
Rural Americans are Regular Victims
Once telephone scams make headlines, it can already be too late for some residents. The Federal Trade Commission estimates that the overall cost of fraud to older consumers in 2023 may have been as high as $61.5 billion. Earlier this year, Sheriff Tom Fridley of Sanborn County, South Dakota, reported that the Sheriff’s Office is investigating two additional cases in which elderly residents fell victim to these scams, resulting in significant financial losses.
The Noble Oklahoma Police Department reported that an elderly woman received a phone call that convinced her to withdraw money from her account. She then drove to another bank and deposited $15,000 into an ATM.
What to Do?
Education is key, not just once, but on a regular cadence utilizing various resources. Good options include community classes, newsletter stories, and bill-stuffer messages, among others.
Another option is to do what many Innovative Systems APMAX customers have done for a long time, adding or fully deploying your TCM Call Screener service. One company has installed TCM on all customer landlines at no charge, offering users the option to opt out of the service. To date, the service has intercepted over 2.7 million out-of-area calls, with 2.3 million of those being dropped as robocalls that did not respond to the challenge message. The challenge message gives callers the option to press a digit on their phone to pass through. In this case, 510,000 calls were successfully verified as friends and family. The best part is that the only time customers would have their phone ring is when they were being called by friends and family members.
