In a recent report released by Truecaller, a Caller ID and Spam blocking app, Nigeria is among the top 20 countries in the world affected by Spam Calls and Spam SMS.
For Spam Calls, Brazil, Peru and Indonesia rank as the top three countries globally while South Africa, Nigeria and Egypt are the top three in Africa, with South Africa ranking number one despite its lower subscriber number of 105 million compared to Nigeria’s 180 million subscribers.
South Africa ranks number 6 in the world with the average user receiving 45.6 spam calls monthly. According to the study, the average user in Nigeria receives 8.4 spam calls per month, which is 20% higher than last year.
Nigeria’s ranking has been affected with the regulatory body’s clampdown on reducing spam calls with its mandatory Do Not Disturb (DND) policy. It could have been higher compared to its current 18th position.
An in-depth analysis of the spam calls in Nigeria shows that mobile operators continue to be the top spammer in this country, and has grown from 61% to 85% in the past two years.
The situation with Spam SMSes is different as Nigeria ranks number 7 among the top 20 countries affected globally, with Ethiopia, South Africa and Kenya ranking top 3. The average Ethiopian received 119 spam SMS per month while average Nigerian received 65 spam SMS per month.
In all, nine countries in Africa and nine countries in Asia dominated the list of recipients of spam SMS. Brazil and Colombia were the only American countries on the list.
Truecaller Insights Report 2019 was aggregated anonymously from incoming calls that either were marked as spam by users – or automatically been flagged by Truecaller during the period of January 1st, 2019 to October 30th, 2019 to understand the monthly average spam rate.
As a go-to app for caller ID and spam blocking, Truecaller application has been installed over 500 million times and records over 150 million daily active users around the world.
