True Caller Insight: South Africa is 4th country affected by spam calls.

South Africa is the fourth country on the list of top 20 countries most affected by spam calls according to this Truecaller report.

In 2017, TrueCaller released their first Truecaller Insights on top spam-plagued countries around the world.

In 2018 alone, they have helped users block and identify 17.7 billion spam calls and also helped identify 74.1 billion calls in general for our users! This means that close to every fourth call that our users receive are spam calls.

In this year’s list, shockingly, Brazil has taken over India as the most spammed country in the world, with the average Truecaller user receiving 37.5 spam calls per month.

This means that Brazil has seen an 81% increase of spam calls in a year!

Breakdown of the stats:

• Although our Indian users are highly affected by spam calls there’s been a marginal decrease of spam calls in the market (1.5%.)
• An interesting trend is the USA has dropped from the 2^nd highest country affected by spam calls to the 8^th – compared to last year. Despite the decrease of spam calls, the U.S. is still heavily affected by phone scams.
• 1 in every 10 American adults (10%) lost money from a phone scam in the past 12 months. With an average loss of $357 per victim, the result of these scams is projected to have cost 24.9 million Americans approximately $8.9 billion in total losses. Read more here: https://blog.truecaller.com/2018/04/26/truecaller-insights-usa-2018/
• New markets to enter the list: Spain, Canada, Costa Rica, Poland, Dominican Republic, and Israel.
• There’s been a big increase in spam calls in European markets like Spain (100%), Greece (54.1%) and Italy (22.7%.) However, Turkey has seen a decrease of spam calls (18%.)
• Compared to last year fewer African markets are in the Top 20 list: Kenya, Morocco, Egypt, and Nigeria. South Africa is the only country in the list – as a matter of fact, the amount of spam calls has increased from 15 to 21 spam calls/months – that is a 40% increase!
• Biggest trend: a lot of Latin American countries has entered the top spam list, and these countries are seeing the biggest increase of spam calls. Costa Rica is the country that has seen the highest increase in terms of percentage (330%).

The case of spam calls in South Africa

South Africa continues to be one of the most spammed countries in the world – where it jumps from 5^th position to the 4^th most spam affected country.

South Africa has seen a 40% increase of spam calls in the country going from 15 to 21 spam calls/month.

Almost half (49%) of all top spam calls in South Africa is scam related. Below are the various categories these spam calls fall under: 

Tech support fraud, where someone pretends to call from your bank or a company saying that your account has been hijacked and need your help to take control of it;

One ring scam, an unknown number (usually an international number) gives you a missed call and when you call them back you get charged a hefty fee for calling to that number;

Job offer scam, someone pretends to be a headhunter calling you to offer you a job but you need to pay a fee in order to get the job.

Telemarketing is also a big problem in South Africa, which accounts to 38% of all top spam calls in the country.

These type of calls usally come from various companies, insurance agencies and financial services trying to offer something.

Source: Truecaller Insights