{"version":"1.0","type":"rich","provider_name":"Acast","provider_url":"https://acast.com","height":250,"width":700,"html":"<iframe src=\"https://embed.acast.com/$/69cdddf03908885dc40749d4/6a276cae6642088a107d08fc?\" frameBorder=\"0\" width=\"700\" height=\"250\"></iframe>","title":"Why You Can't Escape the Spam Call Epidemic","thumbnail_width":200,"thumbnail_height":200,"thumbnail_url":"https://open-images.acast.com/shows/69cdddf03908885dc40749d4/1780968563956-c18a1ee6-36e6-4247-b74e-afaa18d67a5f.jpeg?height=200","description":"<p>Americans received 52.5 billion robocalls in 2025 — 160 per person, per year, most of them offering loans you never applied for. But where do these calls actually come from? This episode of Sidequests traces the full ecosystem: the fake websites harvesting your data, the brokers selling it dozens of times over, the overseas call centers placing millions of calls at near-zero cost, and the reason blocking individual numbers never works. Plus: what you can actually do about it, and why pressing 2 to be removed makes everything worse.</p>","author_name":"Keith Conrad"}