Egypt is the top country to be affected by fraudulent calls among the countries included in Truecaller’s recently published “The Top 20 Countries Affected by Spam Calls” report, where the proportion of scam and fraudulent calls accounted for 99% of total spam calls received in Egypt, while telemarketing accounted for only 1%
According to the report, Egyptians received 10 “annoying” calls monthly, almost all of which were of fraudulent nature. On the other hand, Kenya and Bangladesh followed, with fraudulent calls registering 91% and 41% respectively of the total spam call received in both countries.
“Fraudulent calls are on the rise around the world and can easily target the non-protected with spam phone calls and SMSs all the time. The Truecaller application screens unwanted calls and allows the user to receive calls of interest only,” said Nami Zarringhalam, the head of sector strategies, partner, and co-founder of Truecaller.
Truecaller divides disturbing and spam calls into 9 categories, such as ones related to collection of premiums and debt, financial services from banks, credit unions, health sector, insurance companies, and telemarketing.
The most common category of disturbing and spam calls are fraudulent calls, which seek to raise funds for illegitimate reasons, such as those known as “imaginary” winner calls, where the victim receives a message saying that they won and that they have to respond to the message to win the prize. It ends with the victim paying a large amount to reply to this message, since the impostor is always a special number with extra fees.
