robocalls placed to U.S. phones in 2025. More than half were telemarketing or scam calls, up 15% in a year.
YouMail Robocall Index, January 2026Your shield against phone scams
Nobody is coming
to stop the calls. So we did.
American phones are the most profitable target in the world for overseas fraud, and the agencies meant to stop it collect a rounding error of the fines they announce. PhoneShield is the safeguard for people who want to protect their own family, starting with a parent who should never have to judge a stranger on the phone.
Watch it happen
The tale of two calls.
James from underwriting and a daughter call the same phone. One never rings it. Four minutes on what PhoneShield does with each, and why the person you are protecting notices nothing except quiet.
The crisis in numbers
Record losses, and the phone is where the worst of it starts.
The people who lose the most are over sixty, and their losses are growing faster than anyone else's. The scam that empties a retirement account almost always begins with a voice: the grandson in trouble, the bank's fraud department, the government agent with a warrant.
lost to fraud in 2025 by people who reported it to the FTC, the highest on record and about a quarter more than 2024. Impersonation scams led for the fifth year.
FTC Consumer Sentinel, June 2026lost by Americans over 60 in 2025, up 59% in one year. One in five complaints, more than a third of the money.
FBI IC3 2025 Internet Crime Reportcollected by the FCC out of $208 million in robocall fines it had levied since 2015. The agency cannot enforce its own orders.
Wall Street Journal FOIA records, 2019Where the calls come from
A hundred dollars and a laptop, anywhere in the world.
A scam call center does not need to be in the United States, and most are not. It needs an internet phone account, sold with no identity check, that can show any caller ID it likes. The call enters the U.S. network with a carrier's stamp of approval, rings a phone in Florida, and the person who answers hears a confident American voice from a script that has been tested on thousands of people that week.
buys a VoIP account that can place calls into the U.S. under any name and any caller ID. No identity check, no license, no registration.
Byte Federal, Fraud Preventionof illegal calls still arrive with a full A-level STIR/SHAKEN attestation. The system verifies which carrier sent the call, not who is calling or why.
Byte Federal, Fraud Preventionof any contact method belongs to scams that begin with a phone call, and the largest of those medians is reported by older adults.
FTC, Protecting Older Consumers 2024–2025is the FTC's own estimate of what older adults really lost in one year once unreported fraud is counted. Reported losses are the visible tip.
FTC, Protecting Older Consumers 2024–2025Our sister company Byte Federal traces the whole chain, from the VoIP account to the cash exit, and documents the regulatory asymmetry: the companies that let the call in face no know-your-customer rules at all, while the businesses at the far end of the chain spend millions on compliance. Read bytefederal.com/fraud-prevention for the full data and the policy case.
What Washington has done
A registry, a fine, a press release.
The Do Not Call Registry is a list scammers ignore.
It works on legitimate telemarketers, who were never the problem. A call center abroad has no reason to check it. The FTC publishes the complaints it receives every day; PhoneShield reads that file and blocks numbers with repeated complaints, which is more than the registry does for anyone.
Fines are announced, not collected.
Records obtained by the Wall Street Journal showed the FCC had levied $208 million in robocall fines and collected $6,790. The FTC did better in court, collecting about eight percent of what it won. The companies fined dissolve and reappear under a new name the same week.
Caller ID authentication checks the carrier, not the caller.
STIR/SHAKEN cost the industry hundreds of millions and answers one question: which carrier put this call on the network. Nearly half of illegal calls carry its highest trust rating. Carrier “Scam Likely” labels catch numbers that have already been reported, so the newest campaign always rings.
Complaints go in. Nothing comes back out.
The FTC takes complaints through a web form and offers no filing interface to services like ours. PhoneShield prepares a complete complaint for every scam it declines, with the number, the time and the transcript, so the report takes a minute. We would rather the data flowed both ways.
The safeguard for families
Your parent keeps their number.
The scammer loses theirs.
PhoneShield is a phone number you forward a phone to. Nothing is installed, nothing changes for the people who already call, and the person you are protecting does not have to learn anything or judge anyone.
- Known scammers never ring. Blocked numbers, the shared list from every confirmed scam PhoneShield has heard, repeated FTC complaints and the carrier's own label are all refused before the phone makes a sound.
- Family rings straight through. Favorites skip everything. The phone rings, a whisper names the caller, and one keypress takes the call.
- Strangers meet the front desk. A calm voice asks who is calling and why. Robocalls hang up. Real people answer, and in about a second the call is either rung through, handed to Nora the assistant, taken as a message, or declined.
- One scam blocks it for everyone. A confident scam verdict puts the number on the shared list for every customer, and the script itself is remembered, so the same pitch from a new number is refused too.
- You see everything. Every call shows up in one word, Blocked, Shielded, Rang you, Message or Assistant, with the reason and the transcript. Messages arrive by email, Telegram or Slack.
Set it up for a parent.
Subscribe, and we assign the PhoneShield number. Add the family as favorites. Forward your parent's number with one carrier code, and PhoneShield calls it to confirm the forwarding is on. Choose which phone rings when a call passes: their own line, or a fifteen-dollar second line so the original number only ever rings for people who belong.
$29.99 a month for one line, with 150 minutes of Nora included. Refused calls cost nothing. Cancel any time.
Start PhoneShieldScreening reduces the calls that reach a person. It cannot guarantee that every scam is detected.
Questions families ask
Before you forward a parent's phone.
Does my parent need a new phone or a new number?
No. Their number, phone and habits stay the same. You forward their number to PhoneShield once, from their handset or through the carrier. PhoneShield checks that forwarding is really on by calling the number itself.
Will family and the doctor still get through?
Yes. Favorites ring straight through with a short whisper naming the caller. Contacts and anyone who gives the front desk a real reason ring too. Only known scam numbers are refused without a conversation.
How does PhoneShield know a number is a scam?
Three lists, all checked before the phone rings: numbers the customer blocked, a shared list built from every confirmed scam PhoneShield has heard plus customer reports, and numbers with repeated complaints in the FTC's daily Do Not Call complaint data. The carrier's own Scam Likely label is honored too. New numbers meet the front desk, and a confident scam verdict there blocks the number for every customer.
Do you report scammers to the FTC?
PhoneShield ingests the FTC's public complaint data every day and prepares a ready-to-file complaint for any call it declined as a scam, with the number, the time and the transcript. The FTC has no filing API, so a person submits it. We would rather the data flow both ways, and we say so publicly.
Can it stop every scam?
No, and nobody honest will tell you otherwise. A brand-new number with a brand-new script reaches the front desk, where a real pitch is declined and remembered. PhoneShield removes the easy wins: the number a parent should never have to judge on their own.
Figures reviewed September 27, 2026. Sources: FTC Consumer Sentinel 2025, FTC Protecting Older Consumers, FBI IC3 2025, YouMail Robocall Index, WSJ FCC fine records, FTC Do Not Call data, Byte Federal fraud prevention.
Four and a half minutes
The asymmetric war.
Industrial scam call centers on one side, a 2003 web form and uncollected fines on the other. Why the agencies are losing, and where the one undefended door is.
Your next call can
take care of itself.
Set up a receptionist that works your way.