Not sure how things go in other countries, but here in Brazil, dodging unwanted calls has become a national sport — if only there were medals for it. Every day, we’re bombarded by scammers, telemarketers, and don’t forget that one guy in prison who swears he's kidnapped your relative, hoping you'll panic and send him money to "save" them.
The prison guy is easy to deal with. You just hang up, and he’ll move on to his next victim. But scammers and telemarketers? They’re like the T-1000 in Terminator 2. They never stop. These folks are relentless, almost admirable in their stubbornness. Some might even call them resilient… if they weren’t so incredibly annoying.
And when I say annoying, I really mean it. Somehow, they’ve mastered the art of calling at the absolute worst times. Whether it’s during lunch, in the middle of an important meeting, or just as you start working out. These calls are perfectly timed to disrupt your day. It’s like they don’t just spam you every day. They’ve developed a sixth sense for when you’re most vulnerable to maximum annoyance. For example, since I started writing this post, I’ve gotten four spam calls.
Sometimes, it feels like I’m in a toxic relationship with these callers. It’s like I’m Sasuke at the end of the first part of Naruto. Just trying to be left alone and get on with my life. But, much like Naruto, these scammers and telemarketers keep pulling me back in, refusing to let me go in peace. At least they’re not throwing any "power of friendship" speeches at me to mask the toxicity. Still, it’s an endless back-and-forth. Except there’s no epic battle, just constant, annoying interruptions.
In the face of this relentless barrage, I did what any sane person would do: I exported my call history from my cellphone, built a Tableau dashboard to analyze the spam calls, and wrote a post about it to enhance my portfolio. I mean, who wouldn’t? It’s not like I don’t have anything better to do and am just using this as an excuse to procrastinate. This is totally not the case. I swear 👀
Before diving into the conclusions, let’s take a moment to understand the data itself. As I mentioned earlier, I exported my entire call history into a CSV file and used Python to clean and process it. In the end, I ended up with a table like the one below. It’s worth noting that I removed all phone numbers that are saved in my contacts since my goal here was to focus on the strangers trying to ruin my day. The final dashboard can be accessed through this link.
After using the dashboard to analyze the behavior of my annoying friends, I drew the following conclusions:
- I had a total of 2179 call from the past 3 years and most of the calls are from the State where I live (~60%).
- The most annoying day on record so far is April 14th, 2025, with a grand total of 24 calls. That’s right !!! 24 attempts to ruin my day.
- The most annoying month award goes to January 2024 with 183 calls, because nothing says “Happy New Year” like non-stop spam calls.
- As for the most annoying day within a month, that title goes to the fifth, with 48 calls so far.
- On average, I got 4 spam calls every day and 75 calls by month.
I’m not really sure how to end this post. I’m not exactly an optimist, so I don’t expect these scammers to suddenly vanish and leave me in peace nor do I believe that this post will touch the heart of someone at ANATEL (National Telecommunications Agency) and inspire them to make my annoying friends’ lives harder. But, at least, I had some fun writing it. In fact, it helped me to let out my anger. Anyway, thanks for reading, and... that's all, folks !!!
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