According to the Q4 2024 Global Call Threat Report, UK residents received an average of four spam calls per month, with the share of unknown spam calls rising from 28% to 32%. This tally has contributed to an estimated £1.17 billion lost to fraud last year alone.
With spam and scam calls showing no signs of slowing (about 37,660 unsolicited scam and spam calls hit UK mobiles in the first half of 2025), the firm Uswitch has analysed the state of phone fraud in the UK and provided the data to Digital Journal for review.
The most common types of unsolicited contact in 2025
| Rank | Topic | Occurrences (January – June 2025) | % of nuisance calls |
| 1 | Adult content | 5,242 | 13.9% |
| 2 | Energy saving and home improvements | 3,488 | 9.3% |
| 3 | Recruitment | 2,628 | 7.0% |
| 4 | Banking | 2,141 | 5.7% |
| 5 | Broadband and Telecoms | 2,006 | 5.3% |
| 6 | Retail | 1,869 | 5.0% |
| 7 | Gambling | 1,451 | 3.9% |
| 8 | Energy supply | 1,293 | 3.4% |
| 9 | Investments, Cryptocurrency or Online Trading | 1,041 | 2.8% |
| 10 | Insurance | 856 | 2.3% |
As the above table shows, adult content tops the list of unsolicited digital contact in 2025, accounting for 13.9% of all nuisance calls, with 5,242 reports.This stands at nearly 4,000 more than gambling-related messages, which ranked seventh with 1,451 reports.
Spam and scam calls related to energy-saving and home improvement are the second most common, with 3,488 reports of unsolicited contact. This equates to almost 10% of all nuisance mobile messaging.
Recruitment calls take third place, making up 7.0% of all scam and nuisance calls, with 2,628 reports. Other high-risk categories include banking (2,141 reports) and investment, cryptocurrency, and online trading scams (1,041 reports), ranking fourth and ninth, respectively.
The hidden toll of cyber fraud
| Impact on victims of incidents of cyber fraud | Apr 2018 to Mar 2019 (%) | Apr 2019 to Mar 2020 (%) | Apr 2022 to Mar 2023 (%) | Apr 2023 to Mar 2024 (%) |
| Loss of time/inconvenience | 24 | 31 | 25 | 24 |
| Financial loss | 33 | 31 | 33 | 34 |
| Felt ashamed/embarrassed/self-blame | 11 | 12 | 17 | 21 |
| Stopped using specific internet sites | 13 | 13 | 14 | 13 |
| Health problems | 1 | 3 | 1 | 2 |
Victims of cyber fraud between April 2018 and March 2024 show a common trend, with financial loss and wasted time being the most frequent consequences.Around a quarter of victims experienced lost time or inconvenience, while financial losses affected roughly one-third of those targeted.The psychological toll has also grown over time, with feelings of shame, embarrassment or self-blame among victims rising from 11% in 2018/19 to 21% in 2023/24.
The UK cities with the most unknown calls
| Rank | City | Country | Area Code | Total Phone Lookups |
| 1 | London | England | 020 | 217,689,977 |
| 2 | Manchester | England | 0161 | 76,604,224 |
| 3 | Birmingham | England | 0121 | 28,062,454 |
| 4 | Glasgow | Scotland | 0141 | 24,177,309 |
| 5 | Leeds | England | 0113 | 20,488,992 |
London leads the UK for spam phone lookups, with a staggering 217 million searches for numbers starting with the 020 area code. Calls from London are 184% more likely to come from an unknown number than those from Manchester, which takes second place.
There have been over 76 million phone lookups for numbers from a Manchester area code. Birmingham is in third, with over 28 million phone lookups for nuisance, unsolicited phone calls.
