The presence of phones in this period has led to a rise in the number of spam calls in America.
As per Truecaller’s internal metrics, Americans wasted an estimated 227 Million hours (which collectively equates to 9.4 Million days or 311,000 months) on answering spam calls in the last 12 months alone, in the period between June 1, 2023, to May 31, 2024.
It becomes easy for scammers in this digital era to scam people and take away their hard-earned money. In this blog, you will find 12 types of spam calls that Americans primarily receive and fall prey to these scamsters.
IRS Scam
It is a prevalent scam where scammers impersonate Internal Revenue Service officials to deceive the victims into paying fake tax debts or providing sensitive personal information.
They use aggressive tactics, claiming the victim owes taxes and threatening arrest or license revocation if immediate payment isn’t made. They demand payment through unconventional methods like wire transfers, cryptocurrency, or gift cards, making tracing lost funds challenging.
More than 2.4 million people have been targeted by IRS impersonators, with more than 14,700 victims losing $72.8 million.
Law Enforcement Scams
The scam ranks the highest on the list of spam calls in the USA, where scammers spoof phone numbers to appear as legitimate agencies to exploit fear and steal money and personal information.
They claim that there is a warrant for arrest due to missed jury dates, unfiled taxes, or social security fraud. Putting pressure on the individual over the call creates urgency and intimidates you from making immediate payments without giving much time to verify such claims. The scammers may also request sensitive information, such as Social Security numbers, banking details, or addresses, under the pretense of verifying the victim’s identity.
Tech Support Scams
The scammers use deceitful tactics to trick you into unnecessary support services aimed at fixing devices or software issues that were initially never present.
The calls claim to be from legitimate multinational companies asking for remote computer access to correct the problem. In this process, they install the malware and extract money by providing an immediate solution. Sharing remote access can lead to personal data loss, causing various damage. In 2023, the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) received over 880,000 complaints with potential losses exceeding $12.5 Billion.
Home Improvement Scams
Reaching out to a contractor is more accessible, but you must be cautious when choosing one. In these scams, the contractor always asks for some deposit money upfront before the work starts and disappears without completing the project.
Some companies call you up, addressing all the possible solutions to your stated problems, ask for consultancy fees, and plan a date to visit your home. Still, that date never arrives, and the company is nowhere to be found after a few hours. Americans lost $206.9 million to home improvement scams in the last 14 years, $13.8m annually.
Cryptocurrency And QR Code Scam
Scammers pretend to work for law enforcement, the government, or any local utility company and ask you to pay only via cryptocurrency. They will help you purchase the cryptocurrency and send a QR code to make the transfer.
Here, the person falls into the scam by scanning the QR code embedded with the address and losing all the crypto they had earlier in their wallet. Different crypto scams, like rug-pull, impersonation, phishing, and utility, are prevalent in the market. The QR payment market’s value is expected to hit $33.13 billion by 2030. Since 2021, $575 million of all crypto fraud losses reported to the FTC were about bogus investment opportunities.
Virtual Kidnapping Ransom Calls
You will receive a call from a scammer pretending to be a kidnapper who supposedly has one of your loved ones held captive. You might hear the screaming noise in the background that puts you in a stage of restlessness.
Using this situation to their advantage, the scammers ask for a huge ransom to keep the kidnapped person safe and alive. In times of failed contact with your loved ones, these calls seem accurate, and you transfer the money, ultimately leading to financial loss. According to the Federal Trade Commission, impostor scams accounted for the second-highest reported losses in 2022, which amounted to US$2.6 billion.
Lottery Scam Calls
These calls trick people into thinking they have won huge prizes or hefty amounts of money that sound too good to be true. Creating this excitement, the scammers solicit personal confidential information or money from the person on call.
They ask for a small token amount and offer to make the transfer now but ultimately sweep the balance from the person’s bank account. Despite the increasing awareness of online crimes, daily financial losses to lottery, sweepstakes, or inheritance scams have grown around four times from 2015 ($53.1K per day) to 2022 ($229K per day).
Work From Home Job Scam Calls
The scammers look for people who need jobs and find their details by surfing through different websites. Since people are looking for opportunities, scammers lure them based on their needs by promising them good pay if they are willing to put in 100% effort.
They provide links to training sessions by charging an upfront fee that simultaneously gives rise to false hopes and financial losses. According to the Federal Trade Commission, Americans were scammed out of $68 million due to fake business and job opportunities in the first quarter of 2022.
Romance Spam Calls
The scammers create fake profiles on different platforms and dating apps where they connect with multiple people.
The relationships are all fake, and they try to lure you with a story. Once the two partners have enough trust and belief, they start asking for money for different fake occasions. In 2022, there were 73,000 reported romance scam cases in the US, more than double the number of reports filed in 2020.
Medicare Scam Calls
The scammers use the personal data available online to build your trust. Additionally, phone spoofing technology displays that they are real Medicare representatives, and customers can easily rely on them without hesitation.
Medicare data is more valuable than credit card numbers or Social Security numbers, which can cause enormous mental and financial losses if data gets leaked. The majority of adults fall prey to these types of scams. $ 68.7 billion of total healthcare fraud losses are from Medicare and Medicaid fraud.
Software Trial Spam Calls
Scammers try to track your online behavior, and while you look for different software or apps to try, they pretend to give you a trial of the software at a meager price. They lure you through discounts and app features you will get by paying a small fee.
They send out emails and links attached for you to try the app for free by clicking on the link. Consumers fall into this trap and share personal data and one-time passwords, leading to financial scams. The money from the bank account vanishes, and the number becomes invalid after the call, making it untraceable. An estimated 3.4 billion emails a day are sent by cybercriminals, designed to look like they come from trusted senders.
