India seems to be moving up the right tables and moving down the wrong ones recently. In the yearly Truecaller special insight report for 2018, it has been revealed that India has moved down to the second place in the international spam call standings. The report shed some light on the increasing/decreasing spam calls trends by analyzing the Truecaller data. Let us deep dive into the report to understand how the spam calls are affecting various countries ranking.
Brazil’s Rapid Increase In Spam Calls
India was at the summit of the spam call reports in the 2017 edition of the Truecaller Special Insight Report. Considering the fact that it has moved down to the second place now should be a sign of improvement. But in reality, not a lot has changed from the previous year in terms of numbers. Last year, the spam calls received per user per month amounted to 22.6 calls. However, this year it has only gone down by a marginal 1.5% to 22.3 calls. Hence, not a lot of improvement can be observed.
However, this begs the question as to how India managed to move down the rankings. The answer to this is simple. It is because another country recorded a significant increase in the number of spam calls over the past year. In this case, it is Brazil. Last year, a normal user in Brazil was receiving about 20.7 spam calls per month. This year, the number has increased to 37.5 spam calls per month. That denotes an increase of 81% in the last 12 months!
The USA – The Most Improved Country?
Amidst India falling to second place and Brazil’s unexpected rise to the first, we are forgetting about last year’s runners-up, USA. However this year, USA has gone down the table, as far as the 8th place. The spam calls in the country have gone down from 20.7 calls per month to 16.9 calls per month. This denotes an 18.3% decrease, the best in the whole table.
However, the country is still a major victim of phone scams. About 10% of all American adults have ended up losing a significant amount of money over these phone scams in the past 12 months. With the average loss per person amounting to $357 per victim, the total loss amount goes up to $8.9 billion.
The Trend of Spam Calls in Different Continents
The trend of spam calls has varied from continent to continent in the past 12 months.
The European nations have experienced an increase in spam calls in the past year. Countries like Spain, Greece and Italy have had a significant increase in spam calls from last year, with Spain’s Year on Year increase amounting to 100%. However, Turkey is one of the few countries globally, along with India and USA, to sport a decrease in spam calls.
A lot of African nations haven’t made the Top 20 spam list this time around. The only country from the continent this time around is that of South Africa. South Africa is in 4th position in the list, after exhibiting a spam call increase of 40% from last year.
However, the biggest movers in this year’s list are the countries from South America. Not only have a lot of Latin American countries made the list, but they have also exhibited the highest increase in spam calls from last year as well. The biggest example is Costa Rica, which has seen a mammoth Year-on-Year increase of 330%.
A Familiar Foe At the End
Amidst all these reports of an increase in spam calls, it is natural to wonder the source of all the spam calls. The report found out that the biggest scammers globally were, in fact, the operators. Along with them, the other entities which contributed to spamming were telemarketing calls from financial services, debt collectors and insurance matters.