Hiya Report: A Quarter of All Unknown Calls in the World Are Spam and Fraud

By Business Wire On May 2, 2023

Hiya observed more than 73.6 million spam and fraud calls per day in the first quarter of 2023

Hiya has published its Q1 2023 Global Call Threat Report, providing this year’s first look into the volume and rate of phone spam and fraud in major global markets. In Q1, 24.9% of all unknown calls observed by Hiya were flagged as spam and fraud on average – equating to 6.7 billion instances worldwide across its network and more than 73.6 million per day.

Despite an overall drop in call volumes in Q1 2023 from Q4 2022, many countries experienced a significantly higher rate of unwanted calls compared to Q4. Of the 20 European countries tracked in Hiya’s report, 14 showed an increase in the percentage of calls that were spam and fraud, and in some European countries, more than 40% of calls received from non-contacts in Q1 are spam and fraud. In Asia-Pacific, nine out of 11 countries had an increase in the percentage of spam and fraud calls, topped by Indonesia, which led the world with a 55.6% spam and fraud rate. Meanwhile, in the US, one out of every four calls from non-contacts in Q1 were spam and fraud.

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Regional highlights from Hiya’s Q1 2023 report include:

United States: The spam and fraud rate decreased from 34.9% in the previous quarter to 25% in Q1. The top phone scams reported in the US were fraudulent calls about Medicare, insurance, and mortgage products.
Canada: Canadians receive half the spam and fraud calls that US consumers do yet they experience a higher percentage of fraud calls — 6.3% compared to .73% in the US. The top scams in Canada in Q1 were related to air duct cleaning, cryptocurrency trading, and immigration scams.
United Kingdom: The UK continued to have the highest fraud call rate in Europe in Q1. Thirty percent of unknown calls in the UK in Q1 were flagged as spam and fraud, 13% were fraud – the highest proportion of fraud in Europe. Common scams related to cryptocurrency trading and sales of fraudulent mobile phone devices and contracts.
France and Spain: In Q1, France and Spain led Europe with the highest spam and fraud rate. In Spain, 46.3% of unknown calls were flagged, and France was not far behind at 43.2%. Both markets were up from the previous quarter, and those were the highest rates of unwanted calls in Europe. Spain also had the third-highest rate of fraud calls of any European country.
Asia: After Indonesia, which had a spam and fraud rate of 55.6% in Q1, Hong Kong had the highest rate of unwanted calls, at 49.6%, followed by the Philippines at 25.7% and Australia at 24.7%. Hong Kong had the highest rate of phone fraud in Asia-Pacific at 9.6%, followed by Turkey at 8.3%.

“Sadly, phone spam and fraud is rampant across nearly every country and costing people and companies billions of dollars, and degrading consumer trust in the phone call,” said Kush Parikh, President at Hiya. “Carriers must focus on improving the security and privacy of voice channels to protect subscribers and win back trust.”

Methodology

This is the second quarter in a row Hiya has published a Global Call Threat Report, which not only compares spam and fraud call volumes in various countries throughout the world but also reveals the most common scam tactics across countries. The data in Hiya’s report is based on a representative sample of calls observed during Q1 2023 on the Hiya Voice Security Network, which includes Samsung Smart Call enabled devices and the Hiya mobile app.

Hiya defines spam as unwanted calls, and includes both fraud calls and nuisance calls. The spam flag rate represents calls that Hiya has identified and flagged as either fraud or nuisance. Spam ratios represent the number of unwanted calls from “non-contacts,” or calls placed from numbers that are not in an individual’s local address book.

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