SA among the most spammed (and scammed) in the world, study reveals

[LazyLion]

South Africa is one of the most spam-plagued nations on earth.

Ethiopians receive the most spam SMSs in the world, with an average of 119 every month. South Africans' 114 - an average of four spam SMSs a day - puts the country in second place.

This is according to Truecaller, which said it helped identify 8.6-billion spam SMSs globally in 2019.

The latest Truecaller Insights report, a look into the top 20 countries affected by both spam SMSs and calls in 2019, was released on Tuesday. It shows that nuisance and unsolicited calls continue to be on the rise around the globe.

SA among the most spammed (and scammed) in the world, study reveals

South Africans receive 114 spam SMSs every month, making us one of the most spam-plagued nations on earth, according to a recent report by Truecaller.

www.sowetanlive.co.za

 

[Jet-Fighter7700]

most scammed/spammed and most taken advantage of globally.

 

[grok]

most scammed/spammed and most taken advantage of globally.

And locally. But that they voted for..

 

[NarrowBandFtw]

as jy dom is, moet jy kak

 

[marine1]

Cough cough Nigerians

 

[Spliffcat]

Idiots abound.

 

[nightjar]

These names are the worst that I can recall for spam, with Vodacom sending at least one per day and the others at least one per week: Vodacom, DirectAxis, RCS Finance, Rite Financial Solutions

Phishing and 419 scam attempts happen too often to remember and, as I write this, FortiMail has quarantined a mail claiming to be from FNB

An ex colleague, who should have known better, has just been caught in a parcel scam but when she mentioned it I was able to stop her paying the additional “clearance charges”.

 

[PegZ]

So let me ask this...
Where do us SA'ns report phishing so that it can be stopped, or are we just going to block numbers continually until this practice hopefully just fades away? Surely there should be some process of reporting these numbers so that they are at least suspended from service?
As an example I decided to try to investigate a number after the caller asked me if I, "Mr ..." just tried to purchase a flight ticket for "over R4000" and that the attempted purchase originated in Nigeria.
Needless to say that this caller spoke with that heavy Indian/English accent! I guess its the same people that pretend to be from Microsoft Tech support!
Anyway, I looked up the local SA number on tellows as well as on the porting number website. This confirmed that this number is being used for fraud, and that the number "belongs" to Neotel. Neotel have closed shop according to their "Consumer Transition Letter", and any email to the contact email returns the same letter. Below is an extract.
...
As previously communicated, Neotel Liquid Telecom has terminated Voice and Data Services on the legacy wireless CDMA and WIMAX networks. The shutdown was finalized 02 July 2019 for Postpaid services and 15 July 2019 on Prepaid services.
Legacy LTE services have already been terminated on 31 May 2019.
To get in touch with us, please e-mail Consumers@liquidtelecom.co.za for General enquiries.
We have extended our contingency plans to support number porting until 25 November 2019. To process any new Consumer or Business CDMA number porting requests, please contact your new voice provider and ensure that they submit the ports timeously. To re-iterate, no CDMA ports can be processed after the 25 November 2019 as systems will be shut down
....