Spam calls rise 15% in India, 5th among most-affected nations: Truecaller

Indian mobile users saw a 15 per cent increase in spam calls received every month in 2019 even as India's position improved among countries that are most-affected by pesky calls, according to a report by Truecaller.

Last year, Indians were the second-most affected by spam calls - only behind Brazil.

However, in 2019, India dropped to the fifth position in terms of number of spam calls received by users per month while Brazil continued to stay on the top (45.6), the report said.

"... spam calls received by users in India has continued to increase to 25.6 calls per user a month, which is a 15 per cent upsurge from the previous year," it added.

Peru (30.9), Indonesia (27.9) and Mexico (25.7) ranked ahead of India, while South Africa, Chile, the US, Russia and Columbia made up the top 10 countries most affected by spam calls in 2019.

India ranked at the 8th position in terms of spam SMS with users receiving an average of 61 such messages every month. The top three markets that are affected by this form of spam were Ethiopia, South Africa and Kenya.

About 10 per cent of the spam calls in India came from financial service providers, a category that was not listed last year, the report pointed out.

Operators continued to be the top spammers in India with 67 per cent user calls received for upselling of various offers and reminders. Telemarketing services accounted for 17 per cent, while scammers accounted for 6 per cent of such pesky calls.

The report pointed out that one out of three women in India receive sexual harassment or inappropriate calls and SMS on a regular basis.

Malaysia (63 per cent), Australia (60 per cent), Lebanon (49 per cent), Canada (48 per cent) and South Africa (39 per cent) were the top five markets to receive the most scam calls globally.

The country that has witnessed the biggest increase of spam calls in percentage was Lebanon. Users in the market have seen an increase of spam calls going from 2.8 average spam calls a user to 8.6 - a 208 per cent increase in a year.