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Research · Updated 2026-07-12 · 8 min read

Spam call statistics 2026

An annually-refreshed snapshot of what the US public data actually says about spam calls, robocalls, and consumer fraud losses. Every number is cited. Where we couldn't source a number, we say so plainly.

Headline numbers

  • ~50 billion robocalls received in the US in 2024 (YouMail Robocall Index rolling 12-month total). Volume has held roughly flat in 2025-2026 despite STIR/SHAKEN progress.
  • ~4 billion robocalls/month is the modern US baseline (YouMail Robocall Index, monthly reports throughout 2024-2026).
  • $12.5 billion in fraud losses reported to the FTC across all channels in 2024 (FTC Consumer Sentinel Network Data Book, 2024). Phone-initiated fraud is a meaningful slice; underreporting is widely acknowledged.
  • ~1 in 4 calls from an unknown number is a scam or spam call on average across US consumer lines (rough estimate synthesized from carrier + Truecaller + Hiya reporting; individual users vary widely).

Sources

  • YouMail Robocall Index — monthly aggregate volume estimate for US robocalls. Freely available. robocallindex.com
  • FTC Consumer Sentinel Network Data Book — annual fraud loss aggregation across all reported channels. ftc.gov
  • FCC STIR/SHAKEN implementation reports — progress on caller-authentication rollout across major and small US carriers. fcc.gov
  • National Do Not Call Registry — FTC's registry with public participation totals. donotcall.gov

CFP-internal observations

These are patterns we see in our own service, framed as such rather than as external statistics:

  • We typically see that the majority of unknown-number calls into a CFP screening line self-identify as either a marketing call, a scam attempt, or an unclassified spam pattern within the first conversational turn.
  • We typically see that legitimate unknown callers (a delivery driver, a doctor's office callback, a school) complete the screening intake at a substantially higher rate than voicemail completion rates reported by carrier providers.
  • We typically see that user-declared VIP-list contacts represent a small fraction of total call volume, but a disproportionately high share of actioned-upon calls.

These observations are qualitative and are not a substitute for the sourced statistics above. We do not publish user-count or call-count claims we cannot independently verify. As CFP grows and its dataset matures, this section will move toward quantified statements with explicit methodology.

Methodology

This report combines three sources:

  1. Public datasets from YouMail, FTC, and FCC (linked above). Numbers taken as reported by those bodies at time of last verification.
  2. Peer-reviewed and press coverage of the same underlying datasets. Where competing analyses cite different figures for the same underlying phenomenon, we cite the primary source and note the disagreement.
  3. CFP-internal observations from our own screening service. These are labeled as such and never presented as third-party findings.

Refresh cadence: annually, on or around the July anniversary of first publication. Last refreshed 2026-07-12. Next scheduled refresh: 2027-07-12.

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