Phone spam soar by 70 pc in three years

Person-to-person telemarketing calls, which people sometimes refer to as ‘phone spam’, soared up to 70 percent in the three years since 2020.

HKJunkCall, a spam call blocking service firm, said around 160,000 spam calls had been reported to their database between January and September this year, increasing by over 70 percent from the 90,000 calls reported in 2020 during the corresponding period.

The actual number could be higher as the firm estimated that only one in every 20 people would report the spam calls to their database.

The firm also noted that around 60 percent of the spam calls involved fraud.

Founder of the firm William Wu Man-hon, told a radio program this morning that a survey found that over 90 percent of citizens, as well as the industry, agreed to set up new laws to regulate telemarketing calls.

Wu suggested that companies that run these calls should register themselves with authorities while they should make an effort to remove phone numbers that opt-out from receiving the telemarketing calls.