You shouldn’t be surprised by such calls because guess what?
Malaysia is ranked 19th in a list of 20 countries affected by spam calls in 2019.
An increase from the year before
According to a report in Soya Cincau, this ranking was announced by Truecaller, the mobile app that helps block unwanted calls.
Their figures revealed that the number of spam calls in Malaysia has increased by 24 per cent this year.
Truecaller also revealed that Malaysians have received more than 90 million spam calls so far in 2019, calls that have been blocked by the app.
In 2018, an average user received 6.7 spam calls per month while in 2019, the average number of spam calls received was 8.3.
Based on their analysis, Malaysia has the biggest percentage of scam calls in the world, with 63 per cent of spam calls categorised as fraudulent.
“Fake insurance and debt collecting calls are the normal scam calls. ‘Astro’ and ‘Macau’ scam has been flooding the market in the recent year.
“Lately, there has been scammers pretending to be calling from local post delivery services that a package is stuck somewhere and that they need you to pay before they can release it,” the app said on its blog.
Notably, Malaysia is also currently ranked 15th in the list for SMS spams, with an average user receiving 24 spam SMSes each month.
If you are wondering which country made it to the top in the list of getting most spam calls, it’s are Brazil with an average of 45.6 spam calls per month. It is followed by Peru with 30.9 spam calls per month and Indonesia with 27.9 spam calls per month.
As usual, please be careful when you get phone calls from shady numbers, and remember to not disclose your private information to anyone over the phone.