PALM BEACH COUNTY, Fla. — Robocalls and robotexts have doubled over the last few weeks in West Palm Beach and Miami ahead of election day.
“It’s showing up on your phone as a scam. It’s just ridiculous,” said Veronica Bain, a voter in Palm Beach County.
According to Transaction Network Services (TNS), election-related spam texts and robocalls are on the rise.
“I don’t know what else to do. I try to ask my phone company if they can stop this,” Bain said.
John Haraburda is with TNS. He said Americans received 8.25 million robocalls on Election Day 2020.
“In Miami and West Palm Beach markets there, you’ve actually seen a doubling of spam traffic over the last two weeks,” he said.
Haraburda told WPTV Floridians have received more than 2.3 million robocalls since August, which is the most of any state during that period.
“We do see quite a number of legitimate nuisance robocall," he said. "So, it’s the campaign, the political action committee, the candidate themselves.”
However, some of these calls are raising some red flags.
“We do see issues of misinformation, presenting that misinformation to the consumer as well as malicious activity, trying to steal their identity,” he said.
Haraburda said the best thing to do if you get a call from someone claiming to be with a campaign or political party is to call the campaign or party directly to verify the legitimacy of the call, or just ignore it altogether.
“I ignore them. I delete them,” said Brian McDowell, a voter Palm in Beach County. “If I need somebody’s opinion, I’ll ask for it but otherwise, I’m not interested.”
“For the most part, I stop answering," Bain said. "There’s a lot going on this election season and I’m just hardly answering the phone anymore.”
