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Americans received an estimated 3.4 billion automated scam calls last month, per The New York Times. That's over 900 million more calls than the same month last year.
What's happening: The FTC and FCC recently examined policies to clamp down on illegal caller ID spoofing — when spam callers mimic the target's own phone number — and lawmakers in Congress have introduced or passed legislation to curb the surge. However, the FCC recently rolled back Obama-era guidance on what constitutes an "auto-dialer," which some consumer advocates warn could open the floodgates for more spam callers.