Mobile users to lose $58 bn in scam calls globally this year: Report

Mobile users are expected to lose a massive $58 billion to fraudulent scam calls globally this year, a report showed on Monday.

The loss due to fraudulent robocalls is a rise from $53 billion mobile subscribers faced last year, according to Juniper Research.

These losses will be driven by the increase in multifarious scam calls to deceive end users, such as unauthorised call forwarding or caller ID spoofing, with the end goal of financial gain.

Despite the ongoing development of robocalling mitigation tools, the report predicted that fraudsters' ability to innovate fraud methods will drive these losses to reach $70 billion globally by 2027.

North America continues to be the most impacted region by fraudulent robocalls, as its affluent nature provides larger monetary opportunities for fraudsters and will account for over half of the losses attributable to robocalling in 2023.

However, the report estimates that STIR/SHAKEN framework has reduced the year-on-year growth of fraudulent losses to robocalling.

By 2025, fraudulent losses arising from robocalling are anticipated to decline for the first time in North America, owing to the widespread adoption of this framework, said the report.