Movistar blocks over 1 million fraudulent calls a day, SMS next

Movistar's network automatically blocks around 1.1 million fraudulent calls every day, and Telefónica is now preparing the same kind of protection for text messages.

According to figures from the company, roughly 40 million calls cross its network on a typical day. Of those, about 550,000 are flagged as potentially unwanted, and some 470,000 are marked as spam. More than 80,000 are stopped before reaching customers who have switched on call blocking.

Network-level defence

Telefónica began blocking malicious calls with fake or manipulated numbers in March 2025, before the government's Anti-Scam Plan for phone calls and SMS took effect three months later. Since then it has blocked more than 241 million voice calls, about 60% of everything blocked by all Spanish operators. That share reached 90% at the plan's first anniversary, but rivals have been catching up.

In March, Movistar and O2 also launched 'Llamadas spam', which warns users about unwanted, mostly commercial, calls and lets them block these by default. More than 1.2 million customers have enabled blocking, via the Mi Movistar app or by calling 1551 on O2. Since launch, Movistar has identified 166 million spam calls and blocked over 15 million at customers' request, making it the fastest-adopted feature in Telefónica's history.

SMS and smishing

The next target is smishing, where scammers impersonate banks, tax authorities or the traffic agency DGT by text message. Telefónica has blocked more than 28 million fraudulent SMS since the rules came into force last year, but the company considers that insufficient.

It is therefore developing a tool to detect suspicious messages, due in the coming months. Thousands of customers have given consent for their SMS content to be analysed so the system can learn to spot fraud and block it automatically. The company says analysis is anonymised and no data is stored.

Customers who want to take part can open the Mi Movistar app or customer area, go to 'Gestiona tu Protección' > 'SMS' and choose 'Detección avanzada de SMS fraudulentos'.