Quarter of Brits Report Deepfake Phone Scams

Global consumers encountered over one billion fraudulent calls in the final quarter of 2024, with a quarter of Brits and nearly a third (31%) of Americans exposed to deepfakes, according to Hiya.

The voice intelligence specialist compiled its Q4 2024 Global Call Threat Report from a January survey of 12,000 global consumers, and a representative sample of calls observed on the Hiya Voice Intelligence Network.

It revealed a significant uptick in unwanted calls – including nuisance calls and scams – of 1.5 billion between Q3 and Q4 of 2024. Of the 11.3 billion spam calls recorded in the final three months of the year, 22% were described as nuisance calls while 9% were labelled fraud.

The growing use of highly convincing, AI-powered deepfake technology is catching out consumers in ever-greater numbers.

Read more on deepfakes: One Deepfake Digital Identity Attack Strikes Every Five Minutes.

Two-fifths (40%) of Brits and even more (45%) Americans who were exposed to deepfake calls said they fell for one, with slightly fewer (35% and 34% respectively) claiming they lost money. A similar share (32%) said they’d also had personal information stolen.

On average, voice-based fraud costs Americans $539, rising to £595 ($751) in the UK, CA$1479 ($1037) in Canada and €1089 ($1141) in France.

Spam call volumes varied significantly by country in Q4. Germans received an average of three spam calls per person each month, while those in Brazil and Chile averaged 28. Spain and France were tied in first place in Europe with 15 nuisance calls per person on average.

Despite the large share of British consumers that lost money to deepfakes in the period, the country overall had one of the lowest rates of spam in Europe – at just four calls per person.

HMRC scams continue to be the most common in the UK, coming top every quarter in 2024. In the US it was Medicare scams that topped the list.

In a harbinger of problems to come, a UCL study from 2023 found that humans could not tell deepfake speech apart from real human voice samples 27% of the time.

The most common deepfake call types by subject in Q4 2024 related to banking/financial (11%), followed by insurance, holiday bookings and delivery services (all 8%), according to Hiya.