Hiya – UK Residents Receive 4 SPAM Calls Per Person Each Month
The latest Q3 2024 Global Call Threat Report from Hiya, which also works with broadband ISPs and mobile operators (BT, EE, O2, Virgin Media etc.) to help detect and block SPAM and fraud calls, has revealed that residents of the UK receive 4 spam calls per person each month (up from 3 spam calls last quarter) – albeit one of the lowest rates in Europe.
Overall, the latest report found that 3% of all UK calls were classified as “fraud calls” (unchanged from Q2), while 25% were “nuisance calls” (unchanged) and the remaining 72% reflected all other (normal) calls – this reflects a spam flag rate of 28% (unchanged). Generally, fewer spam/scam calls are making it past the network-level filtering systems being adopted by various phone providers, but they aren’t perfect and not everybody uses them.
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The top sources of scam calls in Q3 2024 once again came from HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) impersonators, which was followed by those trying to impersonate Amazon and Credit Card companies (i.e. Visa and Mastercard). Hiya also revealed that Brits are concerned about the advent of AI-generated deepfakes. In the company’s survey of more than 2,000 British citizens, some 18% said they had experienced an audio deepfake. Most commonly, the deepfake came from a fake personal call.
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, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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I get more spam calls on my landline than on my mobile. Can anyone explain that?
Numbers get recycled. It may be possible that someone had it before you and gave the number out rather too freely.
Have you registered you number with TPS, helped me? https://www.tpsonline.org.uk
Mine are mostly about insulation, or so I gather when I Google the number, I don’t answer the landline to numbers I don’t know. On the mobile I receive none though it’s a Pixel and the caller list shows an occasional call that has been totally blocked.
Wonder how many spam calls India gets?
Probably zero
Whatever happened to the Nigerian ‘princes’ that just need a bank account to release ginormous funds? 🙂
No that would be karma!!
Since I switched my landline from a traditional BT copper line (pair destroyed by a lightning strike) to an ISP provided VoIP service, I have gone from several fraud/spam calls a week to none for the last few weeks. Hope it stays so. By contrast, my partners ancient mobile has seen an significant increase of fraud/spam calls using CLID insertion to deceive.
We have gone the other way – since switching to VoIP we get a spam calls, around 3 per fortnight. Helpfully the digital cordless phones display the incoming call number as ‘Nuisance’ – it’s quite amazing how quickly the calling party drops the call when I answer the ‘phone “Hello Nuisance”!
Biggest problem is with VOIP phone on old landline number (sipgate basic),23 unwanted calls in last month, don’t answer them. Very rarely get anything on pixel phone on ID.