About 60,000 unwanted calls are detected and reported by its community of users in Kenya daily according to data from phone number lookup service Truecaller. That number shines a spotlight on the increased cases of spam both in the form of calls and even messages.
According to a release from Truecaller, the service has been able to detect over 2.3 million spam calls. The numbers are expected to rise as smartphone usage in the country soars. Spammers range from telemarketers to scrupulous individuals who have for quite some time been conning Kenyans through various scams many of which involve them calling users to claim fake accidental mobile money transactions and even redemption of rewards as a result of participation in non-existent raffles and promotional campaigns.
Truecaller, which operates as a mobile application that indexes contacts and is able to match them up with user queries when one looks up a phone number, has gathered that data through its community of 4 million users in Kenya out of a global total of 200 million users. Truecaller’s users have the option of flagging any phone number as spam and when such a number has been reported as spam by many users, it is blocked by default on devices where the Truecaller application is installed unless users explicitly choose to whitelist it.
