South African mobile phone users receive 17.47 billion spam calls between January and June 2026, according to Truecaller data, which also shows a year-on-year rise. The figure amounts to a 25.2% increase compared with the same period in 2025.
Both outlets cite Truecaller’s detection totals for the first half of the year, underscoring that spam calling remains a major volume issue for consumers. The Citizen frames the increase alongside a broader consumer protection crackdown, while the IOL report focuses more directly on the scale of calls and the growth rate. Despite the different emphasis, both reports rely on the same underlying dataset and period-specific comparison, with the 2026 total of 17.47 billion and the 2025 baseline of 13.96 billion reported as context for the change.
