These Were The Most Common Phone Scams Last Year, Be Careful

New Hiya ‘State of the Call’ report is out, and this one is for 2022. It does contain quite a bit of information for last year, though. The report reveals the most common phone scams for last year, so you should be careful.

Hiya revealed the most common phone scams for last year

Hiya says that the most common phone scams of 2021 were auto warranty scam, social security number, credit card, IRS; and student loan. What’s interesting is that the auto warranty scam accounted for more than 1 of every 10 spam calls made to Americans in 2021.

The company also says that US consumers received, on average, 18 fraud/spam calls per month in 2021. Needless to say, that’s quite a lot, so it’s no wonder call filtering tools are so popular.

Hiya did a global survey of more than 12,000 consumers and 2,000 businesses in the US, Canada, UK, Germany, Spain, and France. The company actually got some interesting info out of that.

Scammers frequently impersonate real businesses

It has been revealed that scammers prey on victims by impersonating legitimate businesses. Almost two-thirds (65-percent) of US consumers received at least one call from someone they suspected impersonated a legitimate business. 46-percent of them received more than one.

What’s interesting is that businesses usually don’t know they’re being victimized. 31-percent of US businesses didn’t know if their business name has been used in scam calls by impersonators.

Plenty of additional data was revealed thanks to a global survey. 42-percent of consumers think their carrier is currently doing enough to reduce spam and fraud calls. The answer rate for unidentified calls is just 21-percent, while it climbs to 68-percent for identified calls.

It was also revealed that both consumers (who call business numbers) and businesses prefer to communicate via phone calls. 32-percent of them prefer phone calls, while 20-percent would rather email. 12-percent like sending text messages/IMs, 6-percent rely on video calls, while 5-percent use website chatbots. The other category accounts for 26-percent of users.

If you’d like to read the company’s full report on all this, click here.