Spam Calls: US Experiences Second Most Spam Calls In The World

Americans are plagued with the second-highest amount of spam phone calls each month, ranking just behind India, according to a new study.

Truecaller, a popular caller identification and anti-spam application, found legitimate organizations and scammers alike operating around the world are hitting millions of cellphone users with spam phone calls. Brazil, the United States and India topped the list, all with individuals receiving on averages 20 spam calls per month.

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India topped the list, with users in the country receiving a whopping 22.6 spam calls each month. The majority of those calls, 54 percent of them, were operator spam—calls that offer the recipient some sort of service or special offer.

The U.S. and Brazil tied for second, with cellphone owners in both countries getting hit with 20.7 spam calls every month. In Brazil, like India, the top operator calls account for the largest percentage of spam. Not far behind operators, who make up one-third of all spam in Brazil, are debt collectors.

Nearly one-in-four spam calls in Brazil—24 percent— come from debt collectors attempting to solicit money from the recipient. More troubling for Brazilians receiving calls from debt collectors is there is no guarantee the calls are legitimate; scammers are more than happy to pose as a debt agency to steal money.

Scams are more prevalent in the U.S. than most of the top countries for spam. More than one-in-five spam calls in the country are scam attempts. It’s common for spam calls to increase during tax time, when scammers will pose as the IRS in order to trick victims into giving out personal information over the phone.

Read: How To Stop Robocalls: FCC Wants Carriers To Block Calls From Spoofed Caller ID Numbers

Americans are also commonly subjected to “one ring” scams, in which a person will get a call from a number that appears to be in the U.S. The call disconnects after one ring, tempting the victim to call back. If they do, they end up calling a premium hotline that charges a per-minute fee for the call.

Earlier this year, reports began circulating of another, more elaborate scam in which a victim would pick up a call and be asked “can you hear me?” by the caller. The goal of the call was to trick the user into saying “yes” so their voice could be used by the caller to authorize fraudulent transactions.

Regardless the type of spam Americans are subject to, the frequency of spam calls are on the rise in the country. According to Truecaller’s data, spam calls in the U.S. have risen by 20 percent over the last few months, which jettisoned the U.S. into second on the list most spam-called plagued countries.

Attempts to curb the amount of spam have come from both the government and companies, from the makers of phones and mobile operating systems to telecommunications companies.

Google has implemented a feature in Android to help weed out spam calls. While there are a number of third-party apps that offer automatic spam filtering—Truecaller among them—T-Mobile has also tried to help stop spam at its source by labeling incoming calls from known spam numbers as such.

The Federal Communications Commission has also encouraged carriers to take action to block spam calls, especially those that come from spoofed numbers that are designed to avoid detection.