Thrifty Thinking: Phone Scam Awareness

Truecaller, the world’s largest verified mobile phone community, today announced findings from its first study on the impact of phone scams on U.S. adults. Two online surveys were conducted by Harris Poll on behalf of Truecaller in 2014, with questions covering the frequency of fraud and suspected fraud calls, the amount of money lost, and steps Americans are taking to protect themselves.

According to one survey, approximately 17.6 million Americans were victims of a phone scam in the past 12 months and lost an average of $488.80. This accounts for a massive scam that costs Americans approximately $8.6 billion annually, and breaks down to an average of $35.60 for each U.S. adult.*

The survey also showed Americans had a greater chance of being targeted on a mobile phone than on a home phone or landline. Of those who lost money in a phone scam, nearly half (49 percent) reported losing money via a mobile phone scam compared to 36 percent who reported losing money on a home phone/landline. (Note: 29 percent were not sure what type of phone they lost money on). Overall, men were far more likely to lose money in phone scam, with victims being 71 percent male and 29 percent female.


Alongside the survey on how much phone scams cost Americans annually, a separate survey looked at how fraud affects smartphone owners. Despite the potential to be targeted by fraudsters, many smartphone owners reported that they don’t take any precautions to protect themselves from phone scams, indicating scammers have a huge potential population of victims.

When asked how they protect themselves against phone scams, smartphone owners answered as follows:

64 percent never answer a call from an unknown number
31 percent search online for suspicious numbers before returning calls
20 percent do nothing
16 percent use a caller ID app (different from what their smartphone came with)
4 percent do something else

The lack of precautions from many smartphone owners leaves them susceptible to popular types of phone scams, which seem to be increasing at an alarming rate.  Suspicious calls can include instances where scammers pretend to be IRS agents or debt collectors, callers who spoof your own phone number calling you, and those who initiate fraud via “one-ring scams,” where consumers are tricked into dialing numbers that automatically start billing them for every minute they remain on the phone.

Of smartphone owners who received calls from scammers or suspicious or unknown numbers in the past 12 months:

33 percent never checked their phone bill
21 rarely checked their phone bill
20 percent sometimes checked their phone bill
16 percent always checked their phone bill
10 percent often checked their phone bill

The study also showed that of those who had checked their phone bills, 37 percent found fraudulent charges. A percentage of fraud so high indicates that a great deal of those who hadn’t checked their bills may also have been victims and simply were not aware.

“We’re seeing that a lot of smartphone owners are not taking some very essential steps to avoid becoming a phone scam victim. This amounts to huge cost in time and money if they do get scammed and need to contest charges, or worse, handle a case of identity theft,” Mamedi continued. “Scam artists are only getting smarter about how to conceal their identity and consumers will need better and easier ways to prevent scams.”

Survey Methodology
Two surveys were conducted online within the United States by Harris Poll on behalf of Truecaller via its Quick Query omnibus product. The first one was conducted June 9 and 11, 2014 among 2,059 adults aged 18 and older. The next was conducted from July 18-22, 2014 among 2,040 adults ages 18 and older. These online surveys are not based on a probability sample and therefore no estimate of theoretical sampling error can be calculated. For complete survey methodology, including weighting variables, please contact carter@vscconsulting.com

About Truecaller
Truecaller is the world’s largest verified mobile phone community, dedicated to helping users make the right call. Truecaller’s dynamic community of more than 70 million users is always evolving and is committed to maintaining the integrity of the community by crowdsourcing information to help identify spam callers and verify users. Headquartered in Stockholm, Truecaller is backed by Sequoia Capital and was founded in 2009 by Nami Zarringhalam and Alan Mamedi. Truecaller is available on all internet-enabled devices and on the web. For more information visit www.truecaller.com

About Nielsen & The Harris Poll
On February 3, 2014, Nielsen acquired Harris Interactive and The Harris Poll.  Nielsen Holdings N.V. (NYSE: NLSN) is a global information and measurement company with leading market positions in marketing and consumer information, television and other media measurement, online intelligence and mobile measurement. Nielsen has a presence in approximately 100 countries, with headquarters in New York, USA and Diemen, the Netherlands. For more information, visit www.nielsen.com.

*2013 U.S. Census data showed a U.S. population of 316,128,839, 76.7 percent of whom were adults 18 and over. Based on about 7 percent of adult survey respondents reporting losing money in a phone scam, the total number of phone scam victims in the U.S. was estimated to be 17.6 million. The average phone scam victim in the survey reported losing $488.80. This equates to an average of $35.60 among all adult Americans (including those who didn’t report losing any money in a phone scam).