India ranked fourth among countries most affected by spam calls, says Truecaller

Truecaller in its fifth annual “Global Spam and Scam Report” has highlighted that in the time period January 1, 2021 to October 31, 2021, the company has identified 184.5 billion calls and 586 billion messages, out of which 37.8 billion calls and 182 billion messages were blocked as spam and scam.

Spam and scam remains a global problem and the reason the spam and scam business still exists is because it is hugely profitable for very little effort and consequences. Brazil has retained its title of the most spammed country in the world (four years in a row) with 32.9 spam calls per user per month.

As per the report, India has moved up in rankings from ninth to fourth position owing to a significant increase in sales and telemarketing calls. This year, all categories of sales-related calls make up a vast majority (93.5 per cent) of all incoming spam calls.

During the analysed period, Truecaller users received between 3.4 billion calls as a minimum in February and as many as 4.1 billion calls in December on a global basis. As per the study, there is a noticeable increase in total spam calls in March 2021, correlating to when there were fierce new covid-19 waves sweeping across many developing nations.

Commenting on the report, Alan Mamedi, CEO, Truecaller, said, “In a time when the ongoing pandemic continues to impact people as well as countries and is now going into a new round of lockdowns, this year’s report has shown that not only has the pandemic affected communication behaviour but also spam, sales and scam patterns around the world. This is a global problem that is growing, especially in the western world. Truecaller has been able to help its 300 million users to block and identify 37.8 billion spam calls, a 27 per cent increase compared to last year. The report emphasizes the larger responsibility that Truecaller has, that is to understand how spam works around the world and to use that information to better protect people, to improve the user experience and to make communication between people and companies safer and more efficient.”