Truecaller, a company known for providing caller ID, spam detection, messaging services, has shared some insights about spam calls in a report “Truecaller Insights: Top 20 Countries Affected by Spam Calls in 2017.” According to the report, annoying and unwanted spam calls are on the rise around the globe with the average Truecaller user receiving more than 20 spam calls each month within large markets such as India, the US, and Brazil.
India is number 1 with the average Truecaller user receiving 22.6 spam calls per month. United State and Brazil tie in for second place with an estimated 20.7 calls per user each month.
On a deeper dive, Truecaller says it found that there are common categories that tie all these spam calls together. These would be operator, debt collection, bank, political, health, spam, telemarketing, financial service, scam and insurance product offerings.
Here is an in-depth look at the results for the top 3 – India, USA and Brazil.
India
India’s spam call issue lies with operators and financial services. Many of these operators are seeking to provide special offers for free data, or unlimited calls. Which doesn’t sound so bad – until you get bombarded by them.
United States
Our research on the United States is especially interesting to watch. Now, only two months after our latest Truecaller Insights Special Report, we see that spam calls in the U.S. have risen by yet another 20% (from 18.8 spam calls), making the United States second in line to be the world’s most spam-call plagued country.
In the U.S., our research tells us that spam calls are dominated by nuisance and scam calls. Financial services and debt collectors is also a big category that is spamming our users. This is an interesting observation, as in American culture credit cards and acquiring and paying off student loans are quite frequently adapted.
Brazil
With operators being the top spammers (33%) in Brazil, usually these calls are seeking to provide special offers for free data, or unlimited calls. The second biggest spammers in Brazil are debt collectors who make up (24%) of the top spammers in the country – sometimes these calls can be fraudsters pretending to collect money for illegitimate reasons.
Another major spam call problem that the Brazilian have to deal with is nuisance calls (21%.) These are more general types of calls that are unwanted and unsolicited that are a disturbance for users, or at the very least, amount to prank calls and at worst, harassment and fake kidnap calls.
A big problem around nuisance calls in Brazil are calls from various companies making telemarketing and promotional calls, which amount to (12%) of the total for reported spam calls.
Notes and Methodology
Truecaller got the data for this survey from incoming calls that either has been marked as spam by users – or automatically been flagged by Truecaller during the period of January 1st, 2017 to May 31st, 2017 to understand the monthly average spam rate. During this period of time, Truecaller users received over 5.5 billion spam calls.
As for what type of spam calls users are receiving the most Truecaller looked at the top 100 spammers in each region for the month of May.
Category Key:
- Nuisance: Due to this being a broad spectrum of calls, it is generally calls that is unwanted, disturbance for users, harassment, pranks.
- Telemarketing: Promotional calls from companies, surveys, political/robo calls, new client outreach for services, subscriptions, etc.
- Operator: Telecom companies upselling data plans, promotions, etc.
- Financial service: Banks, credit unions, credit card companies etc.
- Scam: Fraud attempts, money swindling, unknown links, etc.
- Insurance: Companies that specialize in selling different types of insurances.
- Debt collection: Organizations that specialize in payments of debts owed by individuals or businesses, bounty hunters.
- Political: Campaign calls to secure votes for parties, robocalls.
- Health: Hospitals, private practices.
Here is an infographic that tells the full story.
