Truecaller: Spam calls from financial services nearly doubled while insurance-related calls increased by 50% in Malaysia

Truecaller, a mobile app specialising in blocking unwanted calls, recently released its latest insights on the trend of spam calls in Malaysia. Based on their findings, spam calls from financial services increased by 95% while those from insurance companies increased by 50% in the past year.

According to Truecaller, Malaysia also saw a slight increase of 2.7% in total spam calls in 2020 compared to the previous year. The Swedish company also stated that 97% of spam calls in Malaysia were made from domestic numbers.

Based on their data, 41% of spam calls in Malaysia were made by financial services while 24% were from scammers. This was followed by insurance related spam calls which made up 15% of all calls.

The company also noted the biggest decrease in spam calls occurred in March and April, which was the period in time when the Movement Control Order (MCO) was implemented. In March, the volume of spam calls dropped to just over 6 million and it dropped even further down to just over 2 million in April.

Truecaller believed that this was probably due to limited access to certain equipment and technologies for both telemarketers and scammers.

However, this brief respite was not meant to last as spam activity increased again from the month of May and June as lockdown measures eased. Now, towards the end of 2020 it looks like it is business as usual for scammers as the numbers returned to the same levels at the beginning of the year.

Truecaller said the vast majority of fraudster like to prey on the elderly, children and housewives. Scammers are also known to exploit these group of people by claiming to be their loved ones or authority figures like the Inland Revenue Board (IRB) or police.

The Stockholm headquartered company recently released its Top 20 Countries Affected by Spam Calls report which provided insight into the impact of spam and scam calls around the world. Last year Malaysia had the dubious honour of being ranked number 19 on the list but it looks like things have slightly improved as it is no longer listed among the top 20.

Truecaller said globally it has helped blocked a total of 31.3 billion spam calls, which is an increase of 18% compared to last year. The company attributes the high figure to more users using their service as well as an increase in the number of calls made by spammers.

Truecaller is available to download via Google Play and the Apple App Store. For more information visit their website.

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