Operators recorded a decrease in the number of calls from scammers in 2026

In the period from January to September 2026, Russian telecom operators recorded significantly fewer potentially dangerous calls than in the same period last year, the companies told Izvestia.

Beeline recorded 871 million calls, almost three times less than in the same period in 2025. “MTS Defender” identified and blocked more than 2 billion — 27% less — fraudulent and spam calls. MegaFon reported 253.4 million calls from fraudsters, in 2025 there were almost 581 million, and in 2024 – 1.2 billion.

According to Izvestia, operators attribute the decrease in calls from intruders to the effect of new laws and the improvement of protection systems based on artificial intelligence.

Experts note that the number of such calls may have decreased, as fraudsters began to use new schemes of deception. So, one of the growing methods in popularity is the creation and distribution of malware. The Ministry of Internal Affairs from January to August recorded 3,126 crimes related to the creation, use and distribution of malware - 798.3% more than in the same period of 2025, Izvestia reported.

In may, the Chairman of the state Duma Vyacheslav Volodin said that in the first quarter of 2026, the number of calls of telephone scammers decreased by 33-74% year-on-year. According to the Central Bank, in the first quarter of this year, fraudsters caused cumulative damage by 6.8 billion rubles, in the first quarter of last year, this figure reached 80 billion rubles.