Phone calls with spam have become a massive problem for Russians
More than half of Russians suffer from spam after just one request for a service. For this reason, a third of Russians never leave their phone number to companies as a means of communication, and 16% have a second number for this purpose. This is stated in a study by experts of the Novophone cloud telephony service, which was reviewed on April 10 by Izvestia.
According to the survey, the majority of Russians have come across the fact that after contacting the company, calls from other organizations with the same offer begin. 58% of the respondents have such situations regularly, a quarter — several times in their lives, 15% — only for some goods and services. Another 12% have not experienced this personally, but have heard about it from friends and acquaintances.
At the same time, the survey participants noted that other companies start calling both when they refused an offer and when they are interested (24% each). 32% of the respondents call within a few days, and more than three calls can be received per day. One in ten noted that they have been constantly calling for one or two weeks. Another 13% noticed that in addition to making calls, they start writing in messengers and sending SMS.
According to respondents, the main triggers after which the flow of advertising calls begins are registration on new websites and in social networks (26%), requests for a callback on company websites (24%) and independent calls to the company for consultation (20%). At the same time, a third (35% of respondents) noted that most often annoying phone calls begin after requests for a callback on the websites of developers and car dealers. Moreover, almost half of Russians (46%) do not understand how a company they have never contacted got their phone number.
As a rule, unsolicited advertising calls are perceived with irritation. 36% of respondents try to ignore them, 30% immediately stop talking, and 15% also block the number from which the advertising call was received. In addition, every fifth Russian tries to find out where the company got his phone number from. Almost a quarter (23%) asks to delete the number from the database, and one in ten says they did not give consent to the calls and threaten to contact the prosecutor's office or the court. However, there are those who are calm about unsolicited phone advertising.: 12% listen to the offer and compare it with competitors, while 8% consider such calls to be just part of sales.
"Advertising calls are not always associated with database leaks. Operators collect a huge amount of data about their subscribers, including what they are interested in. For example, when a user calls a developer or a car dealer, his number is anonymized in the database. Then these databases turn out to be in the form of cached numbers from advertisers, including competitors of the company that the person has already contacted. And managers make phone calls on them. Calling people who have already been interested in buying allows a business to reduce the cost of attracting customers, which is very important in expensive niches such as real estate and cars. At the same time, this technology is legal, since when signing a contract with a telecom operator, people often automatically tick the consent box for an advertising call," explained the experts of the Novophone service.
The abundance of advertising spam has prompted Russians to reconsider their attitude towards their phone. The majority of respondents (58%) stopped answering calls from unknown numbers, and a quarter turned on a paid number identification service. The respondents also became less likely to leave information about their phone number: 42% do this only if they can't use mail, and a third never indicate it. Another 16% of respondents started a second number, and only 10% simply accepted the situation.
The majority of Russians fear that leaking numbers increases the risk of fraud (64%). Respondents also note that it has become impossible to receive incoming calls calmly (58%), and there is a risk of missing important calls due to annoying calls (36%). The intrusiveness is also annoying: 48% of respondents complain about the flow of advertising, spam and fraudulent calls, 43% — sending offers in messengers and by mail. A third (33%) of Russians, having got into a similar situation, are disappointed in their favorite stores and services. Another 12% of respondents trust only those companies after which their number has not been distributed anywhere, and only 8% do not see any problems in the leakage of contacts.
According to 42% of respondents, users themselves are often to blame for contact leaks: they leave their phone number everywhere, including posting it on social networks. More than a quarter (28%) believe that fraudsters leak the databases of numbers, and 16% are sure that the companies themselves sell customer data.
At the same time, one third of the respondents (32%) believe that a business should protect its customers' data, and according to one in five, this is the responsibility of the person himself. Russians also place the responsibility for data protection on the state (16%) and telecom operators (19%). However, 12% of respondents believe that it is basically impossible to protect personal data in the modern world.
In February, Alexander Timofeev, Associate Professor of the Department of Computer Science at Plekhanov Russian University of Economics, spoke about ways to identify an unfamiliar number. The first step is to search on your phone. This way you can find out if this number was in your contact records, SMS messages, or messenger chats. If no information is available, you can search through search engines. The expert noted that companies often publish their numbers on websites, and this helps to quickly understand who is behind the call, or at least determine which operator or region the number belongs to.
All important news is on the Izvestia channel in the MAX messenger.
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
