Important headlines for May 7th - SFL's plight with robocalls
Bottom Line: These are stories you shouldn't miss and my takes on them...
Why are we getting more and more robocalls every month? - Sun Sentinel
Excerpt: You’re not imagining things: The number of annoying robocalls to our mobile and landline phones are increasing month by month. Armed with sophisticated but easy-to-use tools, robocallers made a record 3.36 billion of the annoying, automated sales, debt collection and scam pitches to United States consumers in April — a 6.5 percent increase over the previous record in March, and nearly a 34 percent hike over April 2017, according to a monthly index of the 50 most-robocalled cities in America by YouMail, a robocall blocking service.
Florida cities are among the nation’s most robocalled, according to the YouMail index. In April, Miami ranked 13th and Fort Lauderdale ranked 14th out of the 50 most-robocalled U.S. cities. And according to a news release by the National Consumer Law Center, Florida is on pace in 2018 to exceed 2017’s record total of more than 2.2 billion received robocalls.
Hot Take: It's not just you. I guess that's the good news here. The bad is the obvious. Florida ranks third for the most robocalls nationally, which is actually proportionate to our place as the third most populous state – but dig a bit deeper and you'll find that most of it happens in South Florida – specifically in Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade Counties. Not only are they the most populous but they're also the most target rich. According to info from the FTC the two demographics most likely to fall victim to robocalling scams... The elderly and minority groups. It's important to remember that if someone initiates a call with you, you should never provide personal information to them. Also, be careful not to call a number they provide you if you didn't initiate the call. Instead to follow-up, look them and the organization up on your own ensuring the proper information and then call back.
It's not complicated. As long as it remains profitable for robocallers and scammers to call South Floridians they're going to try to find a way to do it. And some of the scammers are incredibly sophisticated as well. They often have personal information attained through data breaches and many of the callers are people who'd been professionally trained by US caller center companies overseas (that've since been flipped by evildoers willing to pay them more). As a reminder you can and should report activity that you're concerned about.
Here's link to the FTC complaint page: https://www.ftc.gov/faq/consumer-protection/submit-consumer-complaint-ftc
The FTC allocates resources based on the commonality of the complaints that come in. Want to stop the stuff you're dealing with? That's the best way to attempt to exact and outcome.
President Trump's Historic Jobs Achievement Alfredo Ortiz, The Hill
Excerpt: Unemployment has dipped below 4 percent only a few times in U.S. history. Yet the underlying figures may be even more remarkable. Unemployment among blacks and Latinos fell to 6.6 percent and 4.8 percent, respectively, their lowest levels in recorded history — and half the rates of five years ago.
Hot Take: In today's three-parter on the employment picture I spell this and plenty more out. Bottom line... The messaging doesn't equal the progress. It's remarkable, the progress that's been made, in just over a year.