5 Questions for David Frankel: One Man's Quixotic Quest to Stop Robocalls

At some point, our phone habits changed. It used to be that if the phone rang, you answered it. With the advent of caller ID, you'd pick up only if it was someone you recognized. And now, with spoofing and robocalls, it can seem like a gamble to pick up the phone, period. In 2023, robocall blocking service Youmail estimates there were more than 55 billion robocalls in the United States. How did robocalls proliferate so much that now they seem to be dominating phone networks? And can any of this be undone? IEEE Spectrum spoke with David Frankel of ZipDX, who's been fighting robocalls for over a decade, to find out.