During the last year, on average, Colombians received about 10.1 unwanted calls per month, between communications related to offers of sales and financial services to jokes, scams and harassment, according to the report. ‘True Caller Insights 2021’, carried out by the TrueCaller platform, specialized in the identification of unwanted calls worldwide.
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Colombia is the eleventh country in the world where the highest number of communications of this type is registered, rising nine positions compared to the results of 2020, when the country ranked 20th.
“The country in 2019 ranked tenth and in 2018, thirteenth. The jump that Colombia has made from position 20 in 2020 to 11 in 2021 is surprising. There is no doubt about the increase in spam calls received by Colombians, unlike the previous year, when there was a decrease of 54 percent, “he said. Alan Mamedi, CEO of TrueCaller.
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The report, which took into account figures between January 1 and October 31, 2021, showed that most of the calls classified as spam in the country are related to sales, surveys and subscription offers, this type of communication represented 64.5 percent of the total, which means an increase of 52 percent compared to those of 2020.
There is no doubt about the increase in spam calls received by Colombians, contrary to the previous year, when there was a decrease of 54 percent
They are followed by those of financial services, which also had an increase, reaching 32.6 percent of the total, compared to 16 percent obtained in the same period of the previous year.
On the other hand, only 2.9 percent of unwanted calls were related to cases of harassment, scams and jokes, in this category the so-called dating scams stand out. “Users receive a random call from a woman who wanted to contact someone else. This way of scam is known as honey trapping, with which they obtain personal information and users can be deceived for weeks and in some cases for months”, the study specified.
Regarding the figures for the region, Colombia ranks fifth place among the countries with the highest volume of spam calls. In Latin America and worldwide, the first place is occupied by Brazil, which reports an average of 32.9 communications per user each month.
It is followed by Peru, which is also in second place in the global balance, having 18 spam calls per user per month; Mexico, with 15.5 communications of this type per user per month, and Chile, with 13.5.
The modality of fraud by calls or text messages is called vishing, and in this the criminal makes use of persuasion strategies and emotional manipulation to commit his deception.
“Although this technique may represent a higher cost and work on the part of cybercriminals, it is more effective than other similar forms of attack such as phishing: a more personal communication is achieved through a telephone call, so the emotional manipulation is easier to carry out”, explained Martina López, cybersecurity analyst at Eset.
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Although this technique may represent a higher cost and work on the part of cybercriminals, it is more effective than other similar forms of attack such as ‘phishing’
On a global level, after Brazil and Peru, which have the first and second position, respectively, follows Ukraine, which reports 17.5 communications on average; In this country, most calls are related to financial services (58.1 percent) and scams, mainly about cryptocurrencies (22.8 percent).
Fourth place goes to India (16.8 calls per month), where the vast majority are related to telemarketing, accounting for 93.5 percent of the total. Mexico is in fifth place (15.5 per month) and 74.6 percent of these communications are related to debt collection.
The list is completed by Indonesia, with 14 calls on average; Chile, with 13.5, in this case sales issues predominate, representing 70 percent of the total; Vietnam, with 13.4; South Africa (13.2); Russia (12) and Colombia (10.1).
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