Big growth in app that blocks spam

A RISE of 120% in Truecaller downloads in a year shows a growing resistance by South African cellphone users to hard sales pitches by companies.

The Truecaller app‚ which allows people to see who is calling and filter out spam calls and SMSes‚ already has more than 50 million users in Africa.

The company said yesterday it had more than 3.2 million users in South Africa‚ where the user base had grown by more than 120% over the past year.

The Truecaller app was blocking more than 12 million calls – and 21.5 million SMSes users received and considered as spam – on a monthly basis in South Africa, it said.

“In the past 12 months, South Africa has excelled all countries in the region‚ becoming the fastest growing market for us on the continent,” Truecaller chief commercial officer Ted Nelson said.

In a Truecaller study‚ South Africa‚ Nigeria‚ Kenya and Egypt ranked among the top 20 countries being plagued by spam calls and SMEs.