Hiya – UK Remains the Worst Place in Europe for Call Fraud
The latest Q2 2023 data from caller ID verification firm Hiya, which among other things also works with UK broadband ISP BT (EE) to help detect and block SPAM and fraud calls, has revealed that 27.3% of UK calls from non-contacts are spam (79.3 million) and, of that figure, 18% were classified as “nuisance calls” and 9.3% were “fraud calls“.
Put another way, some 34% of all UK spam calls (79.3 million) in Q2 were labelled as fraud and each person received an average of 4 spam calls a month. The UK is sadly home to the highest proportion of fraud calls in Europe, although it should be said that the aforementioned figure of 9.3% for fraud calls is down from 13% at the end of 2022 and the spam call rate of 27.3% is down from 28%.
The top sources of scam calls in Q2 2023 came from HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) impersonators, which was followed by those trying to impersonate Amazon and, finally, a new scam is growing that attempts to impersonate your own family members (e.g. a fake daughter that pretends to have lost her phone or a fake child kidnapping) – the latter sometimes involves AI-generated voice clones!
“AI voice-generated scams are very likely the model of the future and we expect to find more and more evidence going forward,” said Kush Parikh, President of Hiya. “In order to address this emerging tactic, carriers must implement stronger voice security solutions to protect their subscribers.” Check out the full report.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook and Linkedin.
« Altnets Named as Finalist in British Business Excellence Awards 2023
Latest UK ISP News
- FTTP (5580)
- BT (3529)
- Politics (2552)
- Openreach (2309)
- Business (2283)
- Building Digital UK (2252)
- FTTC (2050)
- Mobile Broadband (1990)
- Statistics (1797)
- 4G (1680)
- Virgin Media (1639)
- Ofcom Regulation (1472)
- Fibre Optic (1406)
- Wireless Internet (1399)
- FTTH (1382)
Is the ‘worst’ figure due to most other European countries not being native English speakers and the widespread use of (American) ‘English’ in worldwide media? I.E. is it easier to create and call English speaking nations rather than, say, French, German, Serbo-Croat?
In Europe scammers speak in Russian…
Was with EE, now Three.
In past 5 years I had 1 or 2 spam calls.
People are simply stupid, giving all details, including phone numbers in all web sites, left, right and then crying that spammers are calling.
Privacy….
@Norm. Oh yes. Almost no one has my mobile nbr. I might, grudgingly, give my landline nbr or if I really don’t believe you need it I’ll type in rubbish. Email? If I have to I’ll give you a Gmail alias to an account I don’t watch with that alias forwarded to my main account. That usually gets turned off after a few days when the goods arrive, a few are long lasting. I mean Crapita manage BBC licences so no way are they getting my main address.
No, its due to the UK government giving aid to the countries that sponsor this type of organised crime. Like India and Pakistan.
The UK is worse for everything, as foreign interests are determined to raid our once great nation, and our government have allowed it to happen.
The thing is, this could be easily fixed. The ISPs just don’t want to. They know who the spam callers are and software is able to identify mass callers. They just don’t want to fix it.
Exactly, profit – don’t fix it’s the same for the water companies. All that sewage dumping.
None of that is true. And what does your ISP have to do with telephone call fraud?
All of the major broadband and phone providers have already introduced fairly sophisticated nuisance call blocking. Many smaller providers also have their own solutions, but experiences at that end do vary. Ofcom are also working on plans to tackle such issues in a deeper way:
https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2023/04/ofcom-uk-test-new-way-to-detect-and-block-spoofed-numbers.html
Well the Government/Regulators could start with protecting our data. It is easy enough now to collate together disparate data but with AI were are into another league.
I had an email this week purporting to be my TV Licence renewal which due to be renewed this month by direct debit. So how did they get to know?
Selling our data to third parties (not entities within the same group) in my opinion should be illegal without any T&C tick box nonsense, especially state organisations.
Also I’d like an optional option on my bank account to bar any transfer to non UK accounts.
We can do certain things such having a separate account for general spend (ideally credit card), one for savings (never shared), one shared for incoming payments from friends/family, travel card while abroad etc but we have no control if our data is routinely passed around.
The mysterious “they” don’t. Everybody gets these emails. Inevitably some arrive in the inboxes of people who need to renew. If you regard the month prior to renewal as spooky then that’s a one in twelve chance.
Selling data has allowed this type of organised crime to flourish, but then again the elites are the ones profiting from it, so it must be perfectly above board eh.
Don’t forget if a number has been registered with the telephone preference service they are breaking the law just by phoning you. I register a complaint with ICO every time I get one of these calls.
though it’s worth pointing out that its hard to enforce, and virtually impossible for calls originating outside the UK.
SHAKEN/STIR might put more pressure on telcos who specialise in serving this sort of customer, though.