South Africans were bombarded with more than 17-billion unwanted calls in the first six months of 2026. That’s a 25% jump from 14-billion in the same period last year, according to Truecaller and reported by News24.

The surge fits a global pattern the company describes in its 2025 Global Insights Report as the “machine era” of spam: automated fraud at a scale no human caller could match. Worldwide, Truecaller identified over 68-billion spam and fraud calls in 2025, up 80% from 2021.

South Africa ranks ninth among the world’s most spammed countries, with 30% of unknown calls flagged as spam or fraud, second in Africa behind Nigeria (51%).

The category breakdown for South Africa is distinctive: insurance is the top reported spam category at 14%, followed by financial services (10%) and debt collection (6%).

Personally, 30% of calls identified as spam feels remarkably low. Truecaller isn’t explicit about how this is calculated, other than saying that a user that receives 10 calls and 7 are spam, then the ‘intensity’ of spam is 70%. What’s not clear is the effect of multiple repeat calls from the same number.