Data has arrived on the first month in which Agcom activated the latest extension of the anti-spoofing filter. A tool that was supposed to block a good part of the telemarketing calls that arrive on our smartphones every day. The first numbers are good but by looking carefully in the tables you can also read a side effect.
Before seeing the results, however, it is better to clarify the function of the anti-spoofing filter. On Fanpage.it we have told each step of this process. In short. Over the last four months, the Communications Regulatory Authority (hence Agcom) has begun to introduce a series of filters for Italian users which aim to limit cases of spoofing.
In technical jargon, spoofing refers to all those practices that are used for hide the sender’s identity. We talk about spoofing when emails arrive that pretend to be institutional. And we talk about spoofing when we receive a call from a number that we then discover never to have existed.
Because you keep receiving calls from abroad
These techniques are often used by companies dealing with massive telemarketing. Agcom’s idea was: let’s cut calls that use spoofing systems and we will also cut those linked to telemarketing. Specifically, the action focused on calls from abroad which they pretend to come from Italy.
The numbers on the effects of the anti-spoofing filter
Agcom’s anti-spoofing filter was introduced in two phases. First on August 19th for calls from landlines and then on November 19th for calls from mobile networks. For now Agcom has released the data collected by 19th to 30th November. In 11 days they were almost blocked 50 million calls incoming. To be precise 49.3 million.
Reading the data it seems that there was also a deterrent effect. From 1 to 18 November 2025 there were calls from abroad with the Italian mobile number 483.2 million. From November 19th to 30th they became 88.3 million. However, there is a secondary effect. The number of calls from abroad has gone from 119.1 million from 1st to 18th November 285.5 million from 19 to 30 November. More than double. The reason is explained by Agcom itself in a note:
“From the analysis of international traffic, it also emerges that the decrease in attempted calls from counterfeit Italian mobile numbers has been accompanied by a shift in illegal teleselling activities towards numbers with a foreign prefix. This represents a clear signal of fallback on the part of illicit activities, which, unable to circumvent the block, attempt to use unfiltered numbers, although easily recognizable by users”.
Massimo Maruccian expert in telephone networks, explained to Corriere della Sera that telemarketing companies have no problems purchasing packages of regularly registered foreign numbers from which they can call Italy without limitations. Hoping, always, that someone sooner or later will answer: “It’s like buying sweets, they cost less than a sandwich. 100 Danish numbers for 10 euros”.
