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, and only one gets through. 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.
is how the FCC described some phone companies’ checks on who their callers are, when it proposed stricter identity rules in April 2026. Some, it said, had become “complicit” in illegal robocalling.
FCC, Know-Your-Customer proposal, April 30, 2026of the calls signed by the most prolific robocall senders carried the top A-level STIR/SHAKEN attestation in March 2026. The system checks which carrier sent a call, not who is calling or why.
TransNexus STIR/SHAKEN statistics, March 2026of 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 2024–2025The chain is lopsided. The phone companies that let a call in run identity checks the FCC itself said in April 2026 are “not doing enough”, while the banks and businesses at the far end of the chain spend millions on compliance.
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.
- Reported scam numbers are turned away. 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 PhoneShield app rings like any call, with the caller's name on the screen.
- 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.
- Every family protects every other. A scam verdict refuses the number on that line at once, and on every line as soon as a second line, a known scam script or FTC complaints confirm it. The script itself is remembered, so the same pitch from a new number is refused too.
- Every call is accounted for. The call history labels each one Blocked, Shielded, Rang you, Message or Assistant, with the reason and what the caller told the front desk. Messages arrive in the app, and family members can get email summaries.
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. Install the PhoneShield app on their iPhone and sign in: calls that pass ring right in the app, so the original number only ever reaches them 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, FCC know-your-customer proposal, TransNexus STIR/SHAKEN statistics.
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.