[This is a sponsored article with Truecaller.]
There are about 29 million Malaysians who own smartphones. That means about 90% of the country’s population are prime targets for spam and scam calls.
However, not all spam is designed to steal your money. The ones that do however can lead to devastating effects like causing families to lose their savings.
Swedish caller ID developer Truecaller aims to help prevent this. Their app has over 300 million users worldwide and has detected and blocked 37.8 billion fraudulent calls in 2021 alone.
Their 2021 report on spam and scams gives us an insight into how Malaysia has fared this year and how badly spam calls have affected us.
What are the types of spam calls we get?
The most number of calls received by Malaysians this year come from financial service companies.
This isn’t surprising because with the pandemic stripping many Malaysians of their income and savings, Truecaller believes that these establishments aimed to capitalise on the people’s financial vulnerability.
Each Malaysian is likely to receive over three of these calls per month with shady individuals trying to get them to sign onto some sort of loan, insurance package, or investment opportunity.
If you find that annoying—because who doesn’t—Truecaller uses its wide database to either block or indicate on your screen a suspicious number when you receive a call.
