Hiya, the industry leader in fraud and nuisance call protection, has seen significant growth in spam calls in the UK grow over the past year as people received an average of 11 spam calls per month in 2019. According to Hiya’s UK State of the Call report, total spam calls in the UK grew to 7.3 billion last year, up 86% compared to the previous year.
To view the latest state of the call data, visit hiya.com/state-of-the-call
Below are some key findings from our recent report, which includes data surrounding fraud and nuisance calls:
Most popular phone scams:
Phone scammers use various techniques when calling their victims. According to Hiya’s data, the most common types of scams that fraudsters are using to target UK residents include:
Top Areas Targeted by Scammers:
To help UK residents better identify fraud and nuisance calls, the top areas in the UK targeted by spammers include:
Newest Area Code of the Quarter: 24 (Portsmouth, UK)
Citizens of Portsmouth are being contacted by cold-callers who are falsely claiming to be from Citizens Advice to scam people out of their money. The caller asks if a person needs advice on debt or money issues. They then ask for the person’s bank details so they could supposedly help clear their debts and offer other financial advice.
Staying Safe:
To mitigate the risk of scam calls, you should not answer or return calls if you do not know the number and you should only make a payment through a bank or online at a government department’s website. For more tips on how to avoid these calls and what to do if you answer them, check out Hiya’s blog post here.
Hiya provides a valuable solution by helping consumers determine whether or not to pick up the phone. This includes identifying legitimate numbers by name as well as identifying and blocking known spam and scam numbers. Hiya provides an industry-first solution available on both its iOS and Android apps to protect consumers from robocalls and other phone scams.
For more details from the State of the Call Report, including top unwanted call categories, top phone scams, top area codes targeted by spammers, and more, please download the current report.