Scammers are using everyday tech tools to flood your phone

(InvestigateTV) — Scam calls and texts have become the top way scammers reach their victims, outpacing overall scam growth, according to a new report from the Better Business Bureau.

Josh Planos, a spokesperson for the Better Business Bureau, said the scale of the problem continues to grow.

“This is a very lucrative industry for scammers, and they really seem to be interested in growing and scaling their efforts in ways that we’ve never seen before,” Planos said.

The BBB’s International Investigations Initiative analyzed nearly 440,000 Scam Tracker reports since 2022. Planos said scammers are frequently relying on legitimate digital services to reach victims.

“In a lot of cases, they are exploiting legal services like virtual or VOIP phone numbers, bulk texting platforms, website builders, AI voice and video generation and social media ad platforms, all of which have very low barriers to entry,” Planos said.

Planos said the report found regulators are struggling to keep up with how scammers operate.

“The study really does argue that the current telecom rules were written for the landline era of phones,” Planos said. “We outline a number of fixes. We should expand two existing FCC rules, which are the telemarketing sales rule and the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, that limit telemarketing calls. We would recommend that it be brought in to explicitly cover text messages, which currently have weaker protection than calls.”

Planos said there is one simple step every consumer can take immediately: turning on a phone’s spam filter.

He also noted that a new or unfamiliar phone number does not necessarily mean a new scam. Scammers can change phone numbers quickly and often do so as part of the same ongoing scheme.

The BBB also recommends being suspicious of texts offering jobs or loans that were never applied for. If such a text arrives, the BBB recommends ending the conversation and avoiding any links sent by an unknown sender.