A new study by Whitepages.com suggests Orlando and Fort Lauderdale area codes are among the top 10 used by scammers and spammers to target cellphone consumers in Florida and across the country.
Whitepages.com CEO and founder Alex Algard says the three-year study found thousands of outbound calls using familiar area codes including Orlando and Fort Lauderdale.
"Our service literally monitors many billions of phone calls and text messages every year and we've gotten very good at finding patterns to identify spam calls," Algard said.
The service is a free caller ID app available to consumers with Android smartphone systems.
Recent scams playing out on cellphone calls include the so called "grandmother scam" and the "medical alert" scam.
"We discovered that a lot of our users were being attacked basically by these spam calls or fraud calls so we decided to enhance the service," Algard said.
Algard tells ClickOrlando.com the app will issue a spammer alert so you know not to answer the call.
He says the technology or "secret sauce" needs to be kept under wraps because "some of these spammers might bypass our filters"
Other than toll free numbers such as 800, 866, 877, 888, and 855, Whitepages.com found a pattern via an estimated 10 million calls.
Detroit's 313 area code is the most used by spammers according to the study. Ft. Lauderdale (954) ranks 3rd, Orlando (407) is 6th.
You can download the Whitepages Caller ID app from Google Play, or for more information on Whitepages apps visit: www.whitepages.com/mobile