T-Mobile's Scam Shield protected subscribers from spam calls 628 times each second in 2023
Last year Americans lost $10 billion due to scams, the highest dollar amount ever reported by the FCC. In a related development, T-Mobile announced that its Scam Shield feature identified or blocked 19.8 billion calls last year which works out to an amazing 628 spam calls handled each second. Citing the carrier's network improvements and intervention by the U.S. government, T-Mobile says that last year its customers saw a 51% decline in scam calls compared to 2022.
T-Mobile says that Scam Shield is built into the core of the carrier's network and includes features like Scam Likely, Scam Block, and Caller ID. The service is free to subscribers of the nation's second-largest wireless carrier and Ulf Ewaldsson, President of Technology, T-Mobile, said, "Scammers are leveling up, but so is T-Mobile’s Scam Shield, allowing us to continuously evolve our technology when our network filters detect a scam call."
Ewaldsson added, "In 2023, Scam Shield identified a staggering 628 scam calls every second, proving scammers aren’t slowing down. T-Mobile’s Scam Shield technology continues to lead the wireless industry in scam protection, helping to keep customers protected from scams with America’s 5G leader." Scam Shield is updated every six minutes to "keep up with scammer trends and identify scam calls before a device can even ring."
T-Mobile said that it leads the wireless industry in scam protection. As of November, T-Mobile had blocked 17 billion calls compared to the 8.2 billion blocked by Verizon over the same period. Health-related fraud made up a leading 23% of scams last year followed by Medicare fraud (20%) and Financial-related fraud (20%). Vehicle scams, which were the leading category of fraud in 2022, were hardly seen at all last year.
Carrie Kerskie, identity theft speaker, author, and consultant, said, "Just as phone and text calls evolve, so do the tools required to combat them. Consumers have a hard enough time trying to discern between legitimate and malicious calls and texts. With the implementation of AI, these scams will continue to increase both in frequency and sophistication. Defending against these scams requires tools to help identify the original sender or, even better, block them from ever reaching the intended target."
States that had the largest number of scam calls attempts last year were Texas, California, Florida, New York and North Carolina. Regardless where you live you need to be alert. Do not answer "Yes" to any question because scammers are believed to be recording that word so that it can be used to verbally authorize and verify certain scams. Be careful!
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