First Orion, a leading provider of branded communication and protection solutions for businesses and carriers, releases its 2022 Mid-Year Phone Scam Report revealing the latest scam activity, most spoofed entities and heaviest hit regions in the U.S. Scam calls continue to be a universal issue affecting consumers, phone carriers and businesses despite continuous intervention at the federal level to curb the flood of illegally spoofed robocalls.
Based on measured proprietary scam call data, First Orion estimates U.S. mobile subscribers received over 100 billion scam calls during the first six months of 2022. This projects to over 80 million successful scam attempts resulting in cumulative financial losses as high as $40 billion.
The report lists vehicle warranty, healthcare and Social Security as the top three most common phone call scams. The top three emerging scams in 2022 are life insurance, financial assistance and home warranty. Apart from scam types, the data also indicates that consumers in Texas, Oklahoma, Ohio and Michigan received scam calls at a higher rate than in other states.
First Orion also identifies insurance, government, warranty, healthcare and financial services as the top five entities scammers spoofed the most in 2022.
The telecommunications company also surveyed more than 2,000 mobile subscribers about their experiences with scam calls during the first half of the year.
“First Orion is on the forefront of protecting consumers from phone scams and protecting the reputation of businesses by reducing the ability for bad actors to connect with consumers and spoof well-known brands,” said Kent Welch, chief data officer at First Orion. “As scammers and their tactics continue to evolve, it’s important to spread awareness regarding their strategies and what can be done to protect consumers and businesses.”
First Orion’s experience protecting consumers from scam and spam calls spans over a decade. The telecommunications company provides communication protection solutions to phone carriers and call centers and shields hundreds of millions of consumers from bad actors by identifying more than 5 billion spam/scam calls each month. First Orion was also the first to market with a STIR/SHAKEN implementation for a Tier 1 U.S. Carrier.