A new report from Seattle startup Hiya highlights the growing problem of phone fraud around the world, with 30 of 39 countries showing an increase in scam and nuisance calls in the second quarter of this year.
While the overall volume of spam calls declined slightly from Q1, Hiya’s Q2 2023 Global Call Threat Report, released Thursday, showed the fraud rate increased in numerous countries, including the top three: 375% in Puerto Rico, 177% in the Czech Republic, and 170% in Australia.
Hiya, a Whitepages spinout that sells spam-blocking identification and blocking software, said some scammers took a “shotgun” approach by blasting thousands of robocalls aimed at unsuspecting Amazon users, while others targeted immigrants or the elderly.
“Phone spam and fraud is an ongoing problem plaguing consumers around the world,” Hiya President Kush Parikh told GeekWire via email. He said Hiya identified more than 70 million suspected instances of spam and fraud calls every day globally in Q2.
The company’s data shows that one out of every four calls from unknown callers in the U.S. is a suspected spam call, and in some European countries more than 40% of those calls are suspected spam.
Parikh said scammers are growing increasingly sophisticated in both the technology and tactics that they use to target and trick their victims.
“They are opportunistic around tax, pandemic, and whatever the ‘issue du jour’ is in a given region or country,” he said.
Hiya has also tracked a number of scams targeting older adults including medicare scams, social security scams, and most recently grandparent scams where a fraudster pretends to be a grandchild in trouble and needs money immediately to post bail or for legal services.
In the U.S., Oklahoma is the most-targeted state, with 25% of calls identified as spam.
Last week the FCC issued a $300 million fine against a robocall operation in the largest illegal robocall operation the agency has ever investigated.
In April, Washington state lawmakers passed new legislation to limit robocalls and give residents and the state’s attorney general the ability to sue companies for unsolicited calls. The legislation is part of a broader effort initiated last year by state AG Bob Ferguson to battle the often annoying calls and to aid victims targeted by scams.
Hiya raised $17 million in 2017 and is ranked No. 31 on the GeekWire 200, our list of top-ranked Pacific Northwest startups.
Would-be victim’s cautionary tale
Residents in the Seattle area were warned this month about a phone scam in which callers are claiming to be law enforcement officers or King County Sheriff’s Office deputies.
Would-be victims of the calls are told that they failed to appear in court to testify as a witness or failed to respond to a subpoena. The scammers claim that a judge has issued a civil fine, a criminal contempt of court citation, and/or an arrest warrant for the call recipient and they must pay to resolve the matter.
A GeekWire reader named Tom, who requested we not use his full name, lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, but the former Seattle and Tacoma, Wash., resident took his 253 area code with him. And he received the scam call.
“I’ve gotten a ton of low-effort spam and phishing via calls and email over the years, but absolutely nothing at this level of sophistication,” Tom told GeekWire via email. “This was not a lazy ‘Nigerian prince’ or any other sort of a broad offshore scam effort.”
Tom said the scammer used a scare tactic, telling him that if he tried to hang up and call the court, it would be considered evasion.
‘I’ve gotten a ton of low-effort spam and phishing via calls and email over the years, but absolutely nothing at this level of sophistication.’
Tom, who studied computer science and is a tech industry veteran with security-related experience, was nearly hooked by the convincing demeanor of the pretend law enforcement officer and the fact that the caller had his full name, address and even the last four numbers of his social security.
A sleep-deprived new dad, Tom said he was close to giving in to the prospect that he had missed a jury duty date, but the request for payment by the money transfer platform Zelle was the cue he needed to hang up. He cited a 2022 New York Times article about rampant fraud on Zelle.
“There are absolutely zero legitimate use cases for Zelle with anyone you interact with, especially when you’re not in person with them or don’t know them,” Tom said. “It’s only used for scams and small businesses dodging reporting taxes on their income.”
To combat spam and scams, Tom has decided to try enabling “silence unknown callers” on iOS, but he’s worried that he’ll miss an important call, especially once his daughter heads to daycare. His biggest advice is even if someone calls from a number claiming to be from an institution, hang up and call a number from that company or organization on their official website.
“I’m frankly embarrassed that this had me as hooked as it did,” Tom said. “Call it the quality of the scam, call it lack of sleep, whatever, I’m grateful they didn’t get me, but I feel violated that it got as far as it did.”
