Comments
India was one of the top ten countries affected by spam calls in 2020, according to the “Truecaller Insights: Top 20 Countries Affected by Spam Calls” report for the year.
India held the ninth position in the top ten most affected countries despite a reduction of 34 per cent in the number of spam calls received.
India used to receive the most spam calls in the world three years ago, the report adds. The majority of spam calls received by Indian users are from domestic numbers, as per the report.
“Our data shows that the majority of all spam calls in India come from domestic numbers. Strict curfews and lockdowns in India made it much harder for telemarketers to go to work, or utilize the equipment they need to carry out large scale spam campaigns. This could partly explain why the total number of spam calls have decreased in India as compared to previous years,” the report said.
Categorising these spam calls, operators were found to be the top spammers in India with 52 per cent user calls received for the upselling of various offers and reminders. Telemarketing services also emerged as big spammers, recording a total of 34 per cent.
Gujarat emerged as the state that received the most spam calls in 2020, followed closely by Maharashtra.
Scam calls in particular increased from 6 per cent to 9 per cent. Truecaller noted that KYC and OTP related scams have gained traction in India each year.
“The scammers try to hook unsuspecting people using either phone calls or SMS and the tactic is always the same: they will try to get you to give up sensitive information about your financials or force you to you reveal a secret OTP with the ultimate aim of extracting money from your bank accounts or digital wallets,” warns Truecaller.
Another interesting fact to note, as per of the report is that in the first three months of lockdown in India, calls to emergency services spiked by 148 per cent.
Globally, the caller identification service identified 31.3 billion spam calls, an increase of 18 per cent compared to last year. While unknown calls amounted to 145.4 billion, a 25 per cent increase from 2019.
Brazil topped the list of most affected countries by spam calls, followed by the United States which witnessed a 56 per cent increase in spam calls from last year.
The number of spam calls was a record high in October, 22.4 per cent higher than the pre-lockdown period
Comments
COMMENT NOW
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.