T-Mobile Report

Customers Protected from More Than 40 Billion Scam Calls in 2022

What’s the news: The Un-carrier released its Scam and Robocall Report, sharing that T-Mobile's Scam Shield identified or blocked 41.5 billion scam calls¹ in 2022, a 75% increase from 2021. That’s a whopping 1,317 calls identified or blocked every second.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230222005650/en/

Vehicle Warranty Scam Calls brought to a Halt (Graphic: Business Wire)

Why it matters: Scammers and spammers are constantly evolving their attack methods as wireless providers and regulators continue to fight back. Industry wide, Americans lost an estimated $39.5B to phone scams in 2022.

Who it’s for: Anyone looking to better protect themselves and their families against scammers.

T-Mobile (NASDAQ: TMUS) today released its second annual Scam and Robocall Report, sharing new data looking back at 2022 to uncover insights related to scam, spam and robocall activity, as well as underscore how the Un-carrier helps to keep customers protected against these bad actors.

“At a time when scammers continue to get more creative and aggressive in their attempts, T-Mobile's Scam Shield and advanced network protect our customers, identifying an average of 3.5 billion calls each month,” said Neville Ray, President of Technology, T-Mobile. “With scammers quickly evolving their tactics, we have to be just as fast at adapting our scam identification technology to fight back and keep customers protected.”

Scammer Behavior

Scammers are continuously upping their game to find new tactics and targets, with total robocall attempts up 75% from 2021 to 2022. Scam call volume reached an all-time high in January 2022 due to a surge of caller retries resulting from the introduction of a new return code (608) mandated by the Federal Communications Commission. Then, scam call volume declined steadily each month throughout the year, with occasional spikes during seasonal scam surges. Several factors contributed to this decline, including ongoing improvements to scam protection technology like T-Mobile’s Scam Shield, agility by mobile operators to implement new prevention tactics and regulator intervention.