War on spam: Airtel's network flags 8 bn spam calls in 2.5 months; identifies 1 mn spammers

PTI New Delhi: Telecom operator Bharti Airtel on Monday said its network has flagged a staggering 8 billion spam calls and called out 0.8 billion spam SMSes within two and a half months of the launch of its spam-fighting AI-powered solution. Leveraging an advanced algorithm, the AI-powered network has successfully identified close to 1 million spammers every day, the company informed in a release. Notably, six per cent of all calls and two per cent of all SMSes on the Airtel network have been identified as spam.

Delhi had the dubious distinction of accounting for a maximum number of the spam calls received and originated. The company, in the last 2.5 months, has alerted close to 252 million unique customers to these suspicious calls and has observed that there has been a 12 per cent decline in the number of customers answering them. "Bharti Airtel, India's first spam-fighting network, has flagged a staggering 8 billion spam calls and 0.8 billion spam SMSes within two and a half months of launching its AI-powered, spam-fighting solution," the release said. Airtel observed that a staggering 35 per cent of the spammers have used landline telephones. Customers in Delhi have received the maximum number of spam calls, followed by customers in Andhra Pradesh and Western Uttar Pradesh. Delhi is also where the maximum number of spam calls have originated, followed by Mumbai and Karnataka. In terms of SMSes (text messages), the maximum number have originated in Gujarat followed by Kolkata and Uttar Pradesh and the maximum number of customers targeted have been from Mumbai, Chennai and Gujarat.

As per the trends, 76 per cent of all spam calls have been targeted at male customers. Additionally, distinct differences have been noted in terms of spam call frequency across age demographics. Customers in the age bracket of 36-60 have received 48 per cent of all spam calls, while those in the 26-35 age bracket have een the second-most targeted, accounting for 26 per cent of spam calls.