Washington, September 20: The amount of scam calls in on the increase. According to a new study, nearly 50 percent of the expected 40 billion phone calls to be made in the United States in 2019, will be from scammers. Call Protection company First Orion published a study and analysing 50 billion calls made to its customers’ users over the past 18 months. The company predicts that almost half of all calls to mobile phones will be fraudulent in 2019 unless the industry adopts and implements more effective call protection solutions. Calls From Phone Numbers Starting With +5, +4 Are Spam & Dangerous, Don't Answer Them: Kerala Police to Public.

First Orion stated in a press release, "Not only is this tactic harmful towards the person being called, but the owner of the phone number used to make the call is also often subjected to return calls from the recipient of the scam call. These return calls come as surprises since the owner of the number used to make the scam call are not aware a call was ever placed from their number, leading to frustration and confusion amongst all parties."

According to a Washington Post report, there has been a leap from 3.7 per cent of total calls in 2017 to more than 29 per cent this year, to a projected 45 per cent by early 2019.

(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Sep 20, 2018 12:09 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).