Phone scams impersonating Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) were the most common type of phone scam in the UK in the fourth quarter of 2024, as they have been for the past several quarters. Amazon scams came in a close second, as Q4 included the busy holiday season when consumers are sending and receiving packages — and more likely to believe a call about a missed delivery or problem with the credit card linked to the Amazon account .
Those were some of the findings in Hiya’s recently-published Global Call Threat Report, which includes data from Q4 2024. Read the report to discover:
- Number of spam calls per person per month in 40+ countries.
- Percentage of calls that are suspected to be fraud vs. nuisance.
- Detailed analysis of the US, UK, Canada, Spain, France, Germany and Brazil.
- Special section on the rise of deepfake scams.
Download the Q4 2024 Global Call Threat Report
Common phone scams in the UK
Other phone scams that ranked among the top scams in Q4 included immigration scams. With these scams, Hiya users reported calls claiming to be from “The Immigration Bureau” warning of an expired visa. Robocalls were commonly spoken in both English and Chinese.
Another commonly reported unwanted call was from mobile phone providers, often offering some type of a discount. Most users reported these as fraud calls, while some reported them as telemarketing sales calls.
Consumers tend to use their credit cards more during the holiday season, and Q4 was rife with imposters pretending to represent Visa/Mastercard. Scammers warned recipients of unauthorized credit card charges, in an effort to get them to reveal their account numbers and passwords to resolve the matter.
Energy scams shot up in early December, at volumes nearly double what they were in the preceding months. These are expected to remain high during the cold winter months.
A special section in the report revealed that Brits are concerned about the advent of AI-generated deepfakes. In a survey commissioned by Hiya, 26% of British respondents said they had experienced an audio deepfake, often on a personal or work call.
Lower spam volumes than other European countries
The only good news about phone scams in the UK is that Brits receive a relatively low volume of spam calls — an average of only 4 per person each month. That’s one of the lowest rates in Europe.
Although the UK’s overall spam rate is 32% from unknown numbers, the proportion of those calls that are fraud, 4%, is also low compared to other European countries. The other 29% were nuisance calls: calls that annoy consumers but are not necessarily illegal.
Get the full report
The Global Call Threat Report is a valuable resource for phone carriers, businesses and individuals. Use the report to compare phone spam in your own country with other countries in your region and other countries around the world.
