Melinda Walsh, a former marketing consultant, gets up to eight robocalls on her cell phone on any given day — not counting the few that come through on her landline.
The constant chorus of robocalls — “your account has been compromised” and “your car warranty has expired” — became a backdrop to her life. It’s a game of “whack-a-mole,” she said. “I have 54 blocked numbers in my phone … and it’s programmed to silence calls that aren’t in my contacts or that I have not called.” Yet the calls keep coming.
Walsh lives in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, which receives the most robocalls per person in the United States, according to data from YouMail, a robocall-prevention service that tracks robocall traffic across the country. The city averaged 39 robocalls per resident in February, YouMail found. That’s more than two and a half times the national average, which is about 14 to 15 calls monthly for each person, according to YouMail. Baton Rouge consistently ranks in the top 5 US cities for this metric.
