South Africans received 14.4 billion spam calls in the first five months of 2026

mylesillidge

mylesillidge

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Spam calls out of control in South Africa

The Information Regulator and the Department of Trade, Industry, and Competition have worked to crack down on spam calls in South Africa, but the situation has only gotten worse in 2026.

According to data Truecaller shared with MyBroadband, monthly spam call volumes have been nearly 23% higher on average in the first five months of 2026 compared to the same period last year.
 
MyBB needs a thread music feature that autoplays YouTube on certain threads..

Anyway: thread music:

 
I’ve been getting ‘e learning spam’ from my voicemail (132)
 
Truecaller is a battery killer, although you can refuse most of the bells and whistles at install to reduce the battery drain and just keep the caller identity functions. To be honest since I stopped using it, I hardly get any spam calls.
 
Bad Ballie said:
Truecaller is a battery killer, although you can refuse most of the bells and whistles at install to reduce the battery drain and just keep the caller identity functions. To be honest since I stopped using it, I hardly get any spam calls.
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Deleted it off my phone this morning so I hope you're right, my battery life sucks for someone who doesn't use his phone.

The thing has become nothing but another layer of spam with it's own never-ending k@k popping up in your face even if you're a premium subscriber. It also has the worst ad-ridden user interface of any app on my phone, hiding ads as legit looking SMS entries etc. is a new kind of low.
 
Jan van Riebeeckstad said:
I get that in one afternoon.
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It has gotten so bad that spam calls now come in at the same time my morning alarm goes off, as well as basically announcing my bedtime at night. Even giving a f**k about business hours is a thing of the past.
 
And nothing will change until spam calls themselves are just flat out made illegal rather than some "opt out" bollocks.
 
RaptorSA said:
Deleted it off my phone this morning so I hope you're right, my battery life sucks for someone who doesn't use his phone.

The thing has become nothing but another layer of spam with it's own never-ending k@k popping up in your face even if you're a premium subscriber. It also has the worst ad-ridden user interface of any app on my phone, hiding ads as legit looking SMS entries etc. is a new kind of low.
Click to expand...
Only blocked two calls since the beginning of last month, only thing I miss is not having the name of the caller come up when the phone rings from an unknown number, but those in my case have mainly been security companies who I deal with on a daily basis anyway. My old phone went from lasting 2 to 3 days between charges to barely making it through one with true caller installed, since I deleted it the phone is back to at least 2 days between charges.
 
I have unknown caller block on the iPhone which forces the caller to say who he/she is and what is the reason for the call. I can then listen to the transcription and decide to block or return. There are good clues - just silence, just a hi, does not say my name, some gobbledegook that can't be transcribed, something with background chatter etc. Then I look for regional code - do I really know someone in Durban or Cape Town or Bloemfontein. I get many with a 31 prefix and these are always scam callers.
 
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The guys on the phone know what they are doing. I have been putting significant effort into souring these people's days when they phone me. Its amazing how well it can work.
I will push them to suicide if I can. So keep marketing 😋 its a fun experiment.
 
Think of all the network capacity to simply cater for spam calls.
Forget data being expensive...seems spam calls add a substantial cost to the network.
 
I suspect that all those robocalls where they just hang up are actually sequential dialers harvesting active numbers. So they don't even have a database, they're just trawling a number range. If they're really sophisticated they could have AI analyzing the voice on pick up - male/female, approximate age, etc. I'd wager they can sell these numbers on for a good fee.
 
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