T-Mobile says it blocked 21 billion scam calls this year

T-Mobile says it blocked 21 billion scam, spam, and unwanted robocalls this year through its free Scam Shield robocall and scam protection service, amounting to an average of 1.8 billion scam calls identified or blocked every month.

Furthermore, based on data through early December 2021, the carrier fund that scam call traffic has reached an all-time high, jumping over 116% from 2020 to a total of roughly 425 million scam call attempts every week.

Last year, when it announced the Scam Shield service, T-Mobile said it could detect or block approximately 12 billion scam calls in 2019 and that around 30 million Americans fell victim to a phone scam within 12 months. 

“T-Mobile Scam Shield has identified or blocked over 21 BILLION calls for T-Mobile and Metro by T-Mobile customers through early December 2021,” the company revealed today in its 2021 Scam and Robocall Report.

“The lowest measured month for scam traffic was January 2021, identifying 1.1 billion calls as Scam Likely. By November, volume had increased exponentially, and T-Mobile identified double the January traffic at 2.5 billion calls as Scam Likely.”

More than half of these 21 billion calls were related to fake vehicle warranty scams, with other top scam attempts pretending to be with the Social Security office (10%), the wireless provider (9%), car insurance company (6%), or package delivery (4%).

The scammers’ favorite targets throughout 2021 were people from Texas, Florida, Arizona, and Georgia, the most targeted being those in the Dallas/Fort Worth area code.

In related news, AT&T said in March 2021 that its AT&T ActiveArmor service blocked or detected over 16 billion spam calls since 2016, with 17 million spam calls identified each day in 2020 alone after examining billions of calls every day for robocall patterns.

In June, Verizon also revealed that around 78 million Verizon customers were protected from more than 13 billion unwanted calls by the Verizon Call Filter.

T-Mobile customers can enable Scam Block to have robocalls and scam calls blocked automatically using one of these methods:

1. Dial #662# from their T-Mobile device
2. Log in to My T-Mobile or the T-Mobile app, where they’ll see an option to turn on Scam Block
3. Turn Scam Block on for their DIGITS numbers by dialing 611 from the T-Mobile device to speak to a mobile expert
4. Download the free Scam Shield app starting 7/24, and toggle on Scam Block

AT&T customers can get ActiveArmor by following the instructions available here, while Verizon users can find more info on how to get and use Call Filter from here.

“Attempted scam calls hit record highs in 2021, but with Scam Shield we are identifying or blocking an average 1.8 billion calls each month — or 700 calls per second! — for our T-Mobile and Metro by T-Mobile customers,” said Jon Freier, the President of T-Mobile’s Consumer Group.