DNA Special: Are you also troubled by spam calls?

Now we will do a DNA test of spam calls troubling crores of people of India. According to a new report, India ranks fourth in the world among the countries affected by spam calls. Every person in India gets at least 16 spam calls in a month. In common parlance, you can also call Spam Calls uninvited guests. These calls come to sell you a credit card, to give a loan, to open a bank account or to sell a company's service or any goods.

In a survey conducted in the year 2017, 6 out of every 10 people admitted that they often get such spam calls when they are busy, due to which they get upset and angry. That is, such calls are also making the people of India irritated. But despite this, India ranks second in the list of countries receiving these calls.

Truecaller, a caller identification company that identifies calls, has found in a survey that about 200 million spam calls were made in India this year from just one mobile number. That is, according to this, a spammer made 6.64 lakh calls every day and 27,000 calls every hour. These statistics show that spam calls are a part of the everyday life of crores of people in India. India is the fourth country in the world after Brazil, Peru and Ukraine, where most spam calls are made. At least 33 calls are made to every person in Brazil, 18 in Peru, 17 in Ukraine, 16 in India and 15 in Mexico.

93.5 percent i.e. most spam calls in India come for sales. That is, they come to sell something or the other. Like a new telecom plan has been revealed, a new vehicle has been launched, any good scheme is available on the credit card of any bank or a new insurance policy has come. Companies call you without your consent for this. It's just like someone coming into your house without ringing a bell and telling you that you have to buy this service or product.

After sales, about 3 percent of spam calls on your mobile phone come for financial services. For example, people get spam calls to open an account in a bank, to take a loan or even to buy cryptocurrency nowadays.

Besides, 1.4 percent of the calls are for fraud or scam. In this, your bank details are taken fraudulently, you are told that you have won the reward and an OTP of four or six numbers i.e. One-Time Password will have come on your number. When you give this OTP, the money is deducted from your bank account. This scam is happening a lot in India nowadays.

It has also been told in this report that in the month of October alone, 380 crore spam calls were recorded in India.

Now the question in the mind of many people is that how do these companies get your mobile number?

So the simple answer to this is that several times, you give this number yourself. Whenever you create your account on any social media platform, you have to provide your mobile number while creating the account. Now, these social media platforms pretend that you are using their services for free. Whereas the truth is that these companies sell your data to these companies and your number reaches those advertising companies, who want to sell their product to you in any way.

This whole system works in such a way that you keep getting caught in the maze of spam calls one after the other. Basically, if a spam call comes to your number and you do not receive that call, then these companies put your number on the bad list. And if a person receives a spam call by mistake, his number is put in the good list. For such people, companies believe that if not today or tomorrow, they will be caught in their bluff.

Now how can you avoid it? Understand it in four points.

The first and most popular way to avoid these calls is DND ie the Do Not Disturb service. You can start this service by calling the customer care number of your service provider and after that, the spam calls coming to your mobile number can be stopped.

The second way is also related to this. You can use the DND Mobile App of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India ie TRAI, Government of India. This app gives its users the option to set preferences, with which you can stop all types of spam calls. Apart from this, through this app, you can also register a complaint against spam calls and check the status of your complaint.

While using any mobile app or social media platform, its policy and conditions must be followed. Often you ignore these lengthy terms and this is where your personal data is sold to advertising companies.

You can also use apps like Google and Truecaller to avoid spam calls.

In the year 2018, some rules were made by TRAI, also known as Telecom Commercial Communication Customer Preference Regulation. Under this, if any telecom company is not able to stop spam calls, it will have to pay a penalty to its customers. If a person receives 0 to 100 spam calls in a month, then this fine will be Rs 1,000. If 100 to 500 calls are received then the fine will be Rs 5,000 and if more than one thousand calls are received then the fine will be Rs 10,000. Now the problem is that neither people know much about these rules nor do telecom companies follow them.