03 April 2025

In November 2024, O2 (Virgin Media) implemented Hiya’s innovative AI-powered scam detection service, dubbed ‘Call Defence,’ as a proactive measure to combat fraud and nuisance calls. Since its launch, the service has marked a remarkable impact, flagging over 150 million ‘suspected’ scam and spam calls, with numbers now surpassing 50 million per month.

This technology leverages Adaptive AI to analyse call number behaviour in real-time. By determining whether an incoming call may be a scam or spam, the service alerts customers before they answer. As a result, calls tagged as ‘suspected scam’ are now answered 42% less often and tend to be 89% shorter than unflagged calls, illustrating a significant reduction in engagement with potentially harmful calls.

The Call Defence technology has been automatically rolled out to Android users and iPhone (Apple) customers running the latest iOS v18 and above. Customers with older software versions may not be able to fully utilize the features of this service, making an update essential for complete protection.

“With more than 50 million calls suspected of being nuisance and scam calls now being flagged every month, we’re empowering O2 customers in the fight against fraud, arming them with important information when deciding whether to pick up the phone,” said Murray Mackenzie, Director of Fraud Prevention at VMO2.

This AI service forms part of O2’s broader strategy to enhance customer safety, which includes blocking over 168 million scam texts in the past two years. Mackenzie urges customers to actively participate in this fight against fraud by reporting scam calls and texts through the free service via 7726, noting that each report helps refine their systems to better thwart scammers.