MTS recorded the first decrease in the number of fraudulent calls in Russia by 3%

At the end of 2025, the number of unwanted calls in Russia decreased by 3% compared to 2024. This is the first recorded reduction in fraudulent activity, which is due to improvements in the AI tools of the MTS Defender service and the introduction of new laws against phone fraud. In total, the service blocked 3.17 billion unwanted calls last year.

• The average duration of an unwanted call decreased from 3 minutes to 13.6 seconds
• Fraudsters have moved to personalized schemes: the share of calls in two or more stages increased by 50%
• The most active attack was recorded in Samara – 48,744 attempts to call one subscriber

Geography and targets of fraudsters

In 2025, scammers called mostly residents of cities with millions of inhabitants. Calls were most often made to Moscow – the capital accounted for 17% of all unwanted calls, followed by Krasnodar (7%) and St. Petersburg (6%). The main targets of the scammers were people with an income over 50 thousand rubles at the age of 35-44 years old, as well as pensioners over 65 years old.

The longest attempt by scammers to contact a single subscriber was recorded in Samara: the user was tried 48,744 times, all calls were timely classified as potentially dangerous and blocked by Defender.

Changing tactics of criminals

Fraudsters have changed their tactics over the past year. While in 2024, criminals were calling on the pretext of renewing a contract with cellular operators, last year the most frequent scheme of deception was aimed at additional earnings and investments (24% of all unwanted calls). In addition, calls have become personalized. For example, the share of schemes with two or more calls increased by 50%. They spiked between May and September, while the number of such calls began to decline sharply from October onwards.