Feel like you get a ridiculous number of scam calls and messages? It turns out, the U.S. leads the world in unwanted scam calls, emails and texts. New research reveals that Americans actually get twice as many as other countries.
According to a new survey of 10,500 adults from around the world, the average American receives about nine fraud or scam calls, nine emails and seven texts a week - adding up to about 100 scam encounters every month.
- To compare, those in the U.K. average about 84 different scam attempts in a typical month, while people in Singapore only receive three scam calls and texts, and four scam emails a week, or about 40 scam attempts a month. Australians fall in the middle, getting about 52 a month.
- Folks in the U.K. and the U.S. currently have the most emails in their spam inboxes, both averaging over 350, while Indonesians average less than half that many, about 154.
- Most people delete these messages immediately (53%) or block the sender (52%), but about a quarter of those in India (23%) and the United Arab Emirates (27%) try to verify the sender’s address first, just to be safe.
- Brits (35%) and people in India (46%) are the most likely to answer a call that says “potential scam,” compared to just 31% of Americans and 22% of Swedes.
- We’re even getting hit with scams on social media, as people around the planet average five spam messages a week on their social channels.
- Three-quarters of all respondents admit they’re more concerned about the security of their personal and private information now than they were five years ago.
- Only 23% feel “very confident” they can tell if something is actually legitimate or a scam.
- People in all countries report being most concerned about financial fraud (46%) and personal data breaches (25%).
- Nearly a quarter (23%) of those polled have already become victims of some kind of fraud, scam or identity theft. Financial identity fraud (25%) and account take-overs (21%) are the most common ones they’ve fallen for.
Source: Talker