News Release Details

SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 19, 2015-- Marchex (NASDAQ: MCHX), a mobile advertising analytics company, announced a major breakthrough in detecting and stopping robocallers. A new wave of call spam that uses fake Caller IDs has risen sharply and analysis by Marchex estimates that robocalling costs businesses more than $1 billion each year in telephone charges and lost productivity. The patent-pending technology is now able to block this new type of robocalling, with results showing a 306 percent improvement over traditional products.

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Marchex Clean Call 3.0 uses voice stream pattern recognition and machine learning algorithms to identify and block automated phone calls with fake Caller IDs. It is the only solution that does not use an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system. In 2015, automated phone calls began adding simulated conversations, music, and radio feeds to toll-free numbers owned by businesses. In addition, many new types of spam calls are now are able to bypass Interactive Voice Response (IVR) systems used by traditional robocall blockers.

Despite the Federal Do Not Call list and recent regulations by the FCC to deter unwanted phone calls, robocalling has risen by more than 150 percent from 2012 to 2015, according to data estimates from Marchex. Several factors are contributing to the rise in robocalling. First, VoIP technology and the decentralization of telecommunications have made it easy and cheap for robocallers to operate. Second, Caller ID faking technology is readily available and is even offered to consumers in app stores. Now, 85 percent of robocalls use fake Caller IDs.

“Incoming robocalls are a real cost to businesses in terms of lost productivity and toll free usage,” said Michael Boland, Chief Analyst and VP at BIA/Kelsey. “Making the problem worse, frequency is increasing and robocallers’ evasion techniques are evolving. This makes adaptive and innovative detection technology critical.”

“Caller ID is trivial to fake, yet the traditional solutions rely on blacklists of Caller IDs to stop spammers,” said Jason Flaks, Director of Product & Engineering at Marchex. “This new technology allows businesses to identify and block the new forms of robocalls and the flexibility to quickly identify and block future types of unwanted phone calls as the perpetrators evolve.”

A new study on robocalls to businesses called “The New Wave of Robocallers Costing Businesses Billions” is available at http://pages.marchex.com/mobile-robocall-report.html.

About Marchex

Marchex is a mobile advertising analytics company that connects online behavior to real-world, offline actions. By linking critical touchpoints in the customer journey, Marchex’s products enable a 360-degree view of marketing effectiveness. Brands and agencies utilize Marchex’s products to transform business performance.

Please visit www.marchex.com, www.marchex.com/blog/ or @marchex on Twitter (Twitter.com/Marchex), where Marchex discloses material information from time to time about the company, its financial information, and its business.

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Source: Marchex

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