Nigeria among top 20 countries affected by spam calls, SMS

Once again, Nigeria is one of the top 20 countries affected by spam calls and SMS globally, a report by Truecaller has revealed.

According to the report released on Tuesday, the average Truecaller user in Nigeria receives 8.4 spam calls per month, which is 20% higher than last year.

This year, Brazil topped the list, with the average Truecaller user receiving 45.6 spam calls monthly.  Brazil is followed by Peru and Indonesia at 30.9 and 27.9 spam calls respectively.

This report had countries in North and South America dominating the list.  They were: Mexico, Chile, USA, Colombia and Canada. The other continent which featured prominently was Asia, parading countries like Indonesia, India, UAE, Sri Lanka, Israel, Lebanon and Malaysia.

Besides Nigeria, South Africa and Egypt were the other African countries affected by spam calls, with the latter having the least record of spam calls in 2019.

For spam SMS, Nigeria ranked 7th among the top 20 countries affected.  The average Truecaller user in Nigeria received 65 spam SMS per month.

However, Ethiopia came tops with the average Truecaller user receiving 119 spam SMS per month, followed by South Africa with 114 and Kenya with 102 spam SMS monthly.

In all, nine countries in Africa and nine countries in Asia dominated the list of recipients of spam SMS.  Brazil and Colombia were the only American countries on the list.

Truecaller users in Ghana received the least number of spam SMS.

Of the spam calls and SMS received monthly by Truecaller users in Nigeria, 12% were scams.  Calls and messages from operators made up 85% and telemarketing accounted for only 3% of spam calls and SMS.

Sri Lanka, United Arab Emirates (UAE and Egypt had the bulk of spams from operators with such calls and SMS totaling 81%, 84% and 74% respectively.

In Malaysia, Australia and Lebanon, scams accounted for 63%, 60% and 49% of spammers, while Israel had the most spam from political calls.

In South Africa, majority of the spammers came from scam calls and SMS, totaling 39%.

Truecaller Insights Report 2019 was aggregated anonymously from incoming calls that either were marked as spam by users – or automatically been flagged by Truecaller during the period of January 1st, 2019 to October 30th, 2019 to understand the monthly average spam rate.

As a go-to app for caller ID and spam blocking, Truecaller application has been installed over 500 million times and records over 150 million daily active users around the world.