NEW DELHI: India tops the list of countries most affected by spam calls, says a Truecaller report. According to the report, India is ahead of countries like the US, Brazil, Chile and South Africa with an average user receiving over 22 spam calls a month.
Truecaller is a software developed by True Software Scandinavia AB that offers integrated caller ID service to achieve call-blocking functionality and social media integration to keep the mobile phone contacts updated. Truecaller has over 250 million users globally and it used data from its user base to compile the report.
The report also said customers in the US and Brazil get about 20 spam calls a month, while in Kenya the average is about seven calls.
“On a deeper dive, we found that there are common categories that tie all these spam calls together. These would be operator, debt collection, bank, political, health, spam, telemarketing, financial service, scam and insurance,” it added.
In India, telcos and telemarketing accounted for a major chunk of the spam calls at 54 per cent and 13 per cent, respectively.
“Many of these operators are seeking to provide special offers for free data, or unlimited calls, which doesn’t sound so bad – until you get bombarded by them,” the report noted.
Incoming calls that were marked as spam by users in its platform during January-May were considered for the report.