New Delhi: Did you know that one of the most common scams in the country remains the popular know your customer (KYC) scam? Yes! According to the findings of the Global Spam Report 2021, KYC scam was the most widespread where fraudsters pretended to be a bank, wallet, or digital payment service asking for user KYC documents as mandated by the Reserve Bank of India.


India has jumped its ranking to move to the fourth position from ninth among top 20 countries affected by spam calls resulting from a significant increase in sales and telemarketing calls, as per a report by Truecaller.


It is the fifth edition of the annual Global Spam Report - a detailed, global study on how spam and scam affects all of us.  


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What are findings of the Global Spam Report 2021?


Over 202 million spam calls were made by just one spammer in India this year. That’s over 6,64,000 calls every day and 27,000 calls every hour of every day.


This year, all categories of sales-related calls made up a vast majority (93.5 per cent) of all incoming spam calls.


The average number of spam calls per user per month stood at 16.8, while total spam volumes received by Truecaller users alone are in excess of 3.8 billion calls in the month of October.


Globally, Truecaller identified 184.5 billion calls and 586 billion messages. Of those, 37.8 billion spam calls were identified and blocked, while 182 billion messages were identified and blocked.


Brazil remained the most spammed country in the world (four years in a row) with 32.9 spam calls per user per month.


There is a significant gap between the average number of spam calls received in Brazil (32.9 calls per user per month) versus Peru (18.02 calls per user per month) which stands in the second position, the report said. In terms of incoming spam messages per user per month, Cameroon topped the list, followed by Somalia, Tanzania, Congo, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, and Benin. PT