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Did you ever wonder if you've given too much of your personal information over the phone? If so, you may well have done just that, according to the new First Orion 2016 American Mobile Usage Survey, showing that people are giving up double as much sensitive data as they did last year – meaning both credit card data and Social Security numbers.
Consumers have to deal with 30 million spam calls via smartphones on a daily basis and when you do the math that number goes up to 1.5 billion calls. "Scammers are getting more aggressive and becoming more effective at targeting our mobile phones," said Jonathan Sasse, CMO of First Orion. "Nearly three-quarters of the people we surveyed received a scam call this year, which is over 60 million more mobile phone owners than in 2015."
To get handle on the consequences of these calls the study talked with 1,000 adults in the U.S. who have mobile phones about their experiences with calls by scammers and telemarketers.
Giving it away
More than 4% of people told a scammer their credit card information, and while this may not seem like a lot it equals 15 million Americans-two times more than in 2015. On the other hand, 1% gave up their Social Security number last year. This year that number jumped to 2.4% suggesting that this year alone just about 10 million people will give scammers their Social Security number when they ring them on their mobile device.
Drats, another call?
More than half (52%) find getting calls to their mobile phone annoying, and 59% have no idea what their rights are when it comes to getting these unwanted calls from telemarketers, as well as debt collectors.
Half of people think that it’s their cell phone providers job to project them from scams-so much so two-thirds would go with a carrier that blocked these calls automatically rather than go with one who did not offer that service.
First Orion offers their customers, including major phone carriers, service providers or consumers, with their PrivacyStar service, which identifies calls from robocallers and scammers and then blocks them.