Holiday season brought out scammers in Q4

The fourth quarter of 2024 was a busy time for scammers. Unwanted phone calls — both illegal fraud calls and annoying nuisance calls — jumped 15% in Q4. The total number of unwanted calls flagged by Hiya increased from 9.7 billion in Q3 to 11.3 billion in Q4.

The types of phone scams perpetrated in Q4 reflected the holiday season. Amazon scams are popular year round, but accelerated during Q4. Package delivery scams were also plentiful.

While some phone scams were seen globally, each country had its own unique set of fraud calls. In Q4, the most common phone scam in the United States related to Medicare and health insurance. In the UK, HMRC tax scams were number one. Amazon scams ruled in Canada, while residents of France and Spain were bombarded with calls from electricity providers.

Those were just some of the findings in the just-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.
• Top phone scams in each of the seven countries mentioned above.
• Spam call comparisons by region.

Special section on deepfake scams

The Q4 report includes a special section focusing on the latest threat: deepfake scams where fraudsters use AI to clone a voice to make their scams even more convincing.

The special section includes examples of recent deepfake voice scams. It also includes the results from a survey commissioned by Hiya to determine how prevalent deepfakes are in Hiya’s key countries. 

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.

Download the Q4 2024 Global Call Threat Report