How to (try to) stop spam callers in South Africa

South Africans can take several measures to minimize the amount of spam calls and unsolicited marketing they are regularly bombarded with.

In 2021, Truecaller’s Global Spam & Scam Report found that South Africa had the 9th-highest rate of spam calls in the world. That was a massive jump from 17th place in 2020.

The popular call-screening app found that South Africans received an average of 13.2 monthly spam calls per user.

So even though there is legislation, and I’ve opted out, I still get a few calls every day. It is true, there may be some older form that still has a tick (or no tick) next to “Yes I’d love marketing calls” or “Don’t give my number to 3rdparty suppliers”, but either ways, the calls just don’t stop.

Truecaller has really worked well for me, so well, that I had to get rid of my iPhone and move back to an Android phone, as the Truecaller app is crippled on iOS due to not having dialler permissions.

So this app is really the only way as reporting to the police, and opting out, just don’t seem to work in practice. It is a nightmare in South Africa as far as managing it goes, and opting out of marketing calls.

See https://mybroadband.co.za/news/cellular/492323-how-to-stop-spam-callers.html
#Blog, #southafrica, #spamcallers, #technology, #Truecaller

Samsung says users will be able to clone their voice to respond to phone calls

Actually, this is an extension of the Bixsby Text Call service, which is an interesting way of screening suspected spammer calls. It deliberately answers your phone using a robot voice and asks the caller to state their business etc. The responses are converted to text for you to read, and you can type responses in, which are read out aloud by the “robot voice” to the caller. The idea being this will cause many spam callers to abandon the call, and shields you from having to actually engage with spam callers on a personal level.

Of course, this Text Call service can also be used in situations for any call where you can’t speak yourself (very loud surroundings, or possibly when in a theatre, etc).

This new development extends that functionality to now using AI to clone your own voice. How well, or fast, this actually works has not been tested outside of South Korea yet. But for suspected spam calls, I’d prefer actually that they speak to a robot voice.

Some caveats here: this feature is only currently available in Korean as the Bixby Custom Voice Creator app for a small number of Samsung handsets (the new Galaxy S23, S23+ and S23 Ultra).

See https://www.theverge.com/2023/2/22/23609915/samsung-ai-voice-clone-bixby-text-call-service-korean

#technology #robocallers #spamcallers #Samsung
#Blog, ##robocallers, ##samsung, ##spamcallers, ##technology