Sponsored Content: This coverage is brought to you by Bell Canada.
While standard spam calls are a persistent nuisance, spoofed calls represent a far greater security risk due to their intentionally deceptive nature. Instead of an obviously fake phone number popping up, a spoofed call shows up looking like it’s coming from your bank, a government office, or even a contact already saved on your phone.
The CRTC has said that roughly 40% of the complaints it receives about unwanted calls involve this kind of caller ID spoofing or impersonation of trusted organizations.
Bell is tackling the problem head-on with an enhancement to its suspicious call detection feature which will now identify spoofed caller IDs and impersonators – a first for Canadians.
Bell first rolled out suspicious call detection in May 2025. The feature operates on an AI analytics model that scans calls in real time and either blocks them outright or labels them, to help you decide whether to answer.
As of June 2026, Bell has blocked and labelled over 500 million suspicious calls for their customers. Of those calls, roughly 21% were automatically blocked, preventing 113 million potentially fraudulent or spam calls from ever reaching customers. An additional 426 million calls were flagged as likely spam or fraud. Their suspicious call detection feature has successfully allowed customers to enjoy more peace of mind when answering unknown phone calls, but fraudsters have now become even more sophisticated using spoofing caller ID instead of just using unknown numbers.
Bell is rolling out an enhancement to suspicious call detection that’s built specifically to detect spoofed calls, meaning calls where the caller ID has been faked to impersonate a real person or organization. This enhancement establishes an industry first, enabling Bell to identify and label the majority of spoofed calls in Canada.
From a customer’s point of view, you’ll still see the same bilingual call labels you’re used to with suspicious call detection. The difference is that more of the calls trying to impersonate trusted numbers will now be detected, either blocked entirely or flagged with Bell’s existing spam and fraud labels. This gives customers greater confidence and control over which calls they choose to answer, helping them take the calls they want while avoiding potential scams. Bell estimates this enhancement will enable them to intercept 60% – 70% more suspicious calls than it does today.
The rollout will be pushed out remotely to all Bell wireless customers on iOS and Android, meaning there’s no download or payment required. More information about Bell’s wireless plans and included features is available on Bell’s rate plans page.
This enhancement reinforces Bell’s broader commitment to constantly explore and invest in innovative solutions to reduce the risk of suspicious calls and help protect customers from increasingly sophisticated fraud threats. The practical benefit for customers lies in the service itself: an AI-powered system working in the background to identify and flag spam calls, fraud attempts, and spoofed numbers before they pick up the phone.
You can learn more about Bell’s suspicious call detection feature here.
Want to see more of our stories on Google?
P.S. Want to keep this site truly independent? Support us by buying us a beer, treating us to a coffee, or shopping through Amazon here. Links in this post are affiliate links, so we earn a tiny commission at no charge to you. Thanks for supporting independent Canadian media!
