TRUCALLER, Stockholm-based caller identity and spam detection tech company on Tuesday ranked Nigeria amongst countries that receive the most spam calls and Short Message Services in the world in 2019.
In a report titled “Truecaller Insights: Top 20 Countries Affected By Spam Calls & Sms In 2019” based on aggregated anonymous incoming calls already marked as spam by user or flagged by the firm from January to October revealed that the level of unwanted calls and SMS rose from a previous 61 per cent to an 85 per cent over the past ten months in Nigeria alone.
“Last year Nigeria fell off from the list, but this year Nigeria has once again emerged as a top spamming country in the world,” said the report.
For spam SMS and calls, the app ranked Nigeria seventh and 18th among the top 20 countries affected in the different categories.
While calls and messages from operators made up 85 per cent, those from telemarketing accounted for three per cent, and twelve per cent were scams.
Brazil topped the list as the most spammed country in the world based in the call category, with Peru coming second and Indonesia at third place with 30.9 and 27.9 spam calls, respectively.
Ethiopia, on the other hand, ranked top on the list of countries most affected spam messages.
While the U.S. continues to be in the top 10 list of the most spammed countries in the world as nearly one in every six American adults falls victim to scam calls.
Other emerging African states on the list include South Africa and Egypt with the later having the least record of spam calls in the region.
According to the researchers, due to the constant revolution in the Information and Communication sector, the phone seen as an extended part the body and required if the information is to be passed across the world at minute seconds, however, with this development comes privacy issues.
“The frightening part is we’re always accessible because of it, and this is something that spammers and scammers take advantage of,” read the report.
The firm said that within the period reviewed, the mobile application helped users identify 116 billion calls and 8.6 billion spam SMS globally.