Since the start of 2026, Swiss telephone operators have taken action against more than 148 million unwanted calls. This is according to a dispatch from the Keystone-SDA news agency, published on 3 October 2026 by SWI swissinfo.ch. According to the same report, this type of abuse tends to increase further towards the end of the year.
The word “action” covers several things here: depending on the operator, a call may be blocked, anonymised or accompanied by a warning. Moreover, the figures released by each operator do not all cover the same period.
“Spoofing” in the crosshairs
According to the dispatch, operators are fighting “spoofing” in particular, a technique that involves displaying a false or manipulated telephone number. Since the start of the year, calls from abroad that display a potentially falsified Swiss number must either be blocked or be forwarded with the label “unknown caller”. The source does not specify who set this rule or on what basis.
Each operator's figures
Swisscom told Keystone-SDA that it had recorded 102 million calls linked to “spoofing” or spam. Of these, 65 million were blocked and 30 million anonymised. For a further 7 million calls, a warning was displayed.
Sunrise announced on Thursday, in a press release cited by the dispatch, that it had blocked, anonymised or flagged more than 46 million calls between January and August, around a fifth more than the previous year. Over the same period, more than 10 million calls from abroad were flagged because they were suspected of spoofing a Swiss number or misusing one. Swisscom, for its part, chose not to disclose precise details, to prevent fraudsters from exploiting this information; the dispatch does not specify what these details concern.
Salt is also deploying a mechanism against unwanted calls. According to the dispatch, it blocks on average around two in five incoming calls. The source gives no absolute number for Salt and does not specify which set of calls this proportion refers to.
Added together, the figures from Swisscom (102 million) and Sunrise (46 million) come to 148 million. One possible reading is that the announced total corresponds to these two operators, but the dispatch does not explain how it was calculated.
How filtering works: few details
The dispatch describes what happens to filtered calls (blocking, anonymisation, warning), but not how operators identify an unwanted call: it reports no technical explanations from Swisscom, Sunrise or Salt.
A game of cat and mouse
According to Salt, the effectiveness of these measures is declining, because fraudsters change numbers very quickly. A Swisscom spokesperson, whose name is not given, sums up the situation as follows: “The fight against ‘spoofing’ remains a game of cat and mouse.” This quote is taken here from the English version of the dispatch.
Why there are more calls at the end of the year
According to Sunrise, the volume of unwanted calls tends to rise towards the end of the year, largely because of contracts and insurance policies coming up for renewal. This is the operator's explanation; the dispatch provides no figures on this seasonal increase and does not detail the link between these deadlines and the calls received.
And how to protect yourself?
The dispatch gives no advice to individuals on how to guard against unwanted calls. It only describes what operators are doing on their side:
- blocking, anonymising or flagging suspicious calls;
- blocking, or forwarding with the label “unknown caller”, calls from abroad that display a potentially falsified Swiss number.
For subscribers, one concrete point emerges from the source: a call from abroad that displays a potentially falsified Swiss number may arrive with the label “unknown caller”. In the absence of further information in the dispatch, this article makes no additional recommendations.
