India ranks four in the list of countries with the most spam calls, Truecaller report stated. In 2020, India was at the 9th position and moving to position four is a significant rise in spam calls.
The data on spam calls was revealed in Truecaller’s fifth edition of Global Spam Report that studies spam calls and how they affect people’s lives. According to Truecaller, scam business remains an issue globally as it is hugely profitable for minimal effort and consequences. The report estimated that around 59.49 million Americans reported the loss of money to scammers in one year, from June 2020 to January 2021.
Interestingly, a spammer has made 202 million spam calls from January to October 2021. A bifurcation reveals that it is over 6,64,000 calls every day and 27,000 calls every hour of every day – from just one phone number. The popular scam was the KYC scam, where the scammer will pretend to be a financial service provider such as a bank and ask for the call receiver’s KYC documents.
The number of spam calls has shown a slight decrease of 1.4% compared to the previous year.
Brazil is the most scammed country
Brazil tops the list among the countries most affected by spam calls. It is the fourth consecutive year that Brazil remains in the position, indicating zero reduction of spammers in the nation. Peru ranked second in the list with an average of 18.02 spam calls per user. Ukraine stood in the third position ahead of India.
Indonesia saw a 2X increase in spam calls between January and October. While the country recorded nearly 12.6 million spam calls in January, the number increased to 25.8 million in October 2021. On average, Indonesians received 14 spam calls per user per month.
In the trend of calls, March 2021 showed an increase in the calls. Considering that the waves of COVID-19 were high, the rise in March can be correlated to the spammers trying to capitalize on the opportunity.
Truecaller’s worldwide data recognized 184.5 billion calls and 586 billion messages. Among them, Truecaller identified and blocked 37.8 billion spam calls. The app also sorted 184.5 billion messages and blocked them.
Truecaller has around 300 million active user bases across the world. Among its user base, 99.7 billion users made calls and sent 7.8 billion messages from January 2021 to October 2021.
