Its arrival coincides with a rise in impersonation scams, with reports of such incidents involving Spark growing by an average of 45% month-on-month from March to May this year, particularly spiking in May.
Spark chief brand and corporate affairs officer Leela Ashford says scammers often impersonate well-known, trusted brands.
Over the past 12 months, Spark has blocked more than half a billion online threats across its network, including more than 1.2 million scam calls, and over 11.3 million attempts to access malicious websites.
Recent reports show scammers used fake internet upgrade offers and supposed billing issues to pressure people into engaging.
Ashford said Spark does make genuine outbound calls, including requested callbacks where customers have asked to be contacted rather than wait in a queue.
“Nearly half of the outbound calls we make are these requested callbacks.”
Other common phone scam reports include Chinese immigration scams, PayPal unexpected charges and cryptocurrency scams.
Text scams also continue to evolve, with scammers increasingly leaning on trust, urgency and impersonation to trick New Zealanders.
Spark rolled out its SMS firewall in April 2024, with about 1.6 million scam text messages blocked so far.
Since its introduction, the average number of scam texts blocked each month has dropped from more than 38,000 to 614.
The company said about 61.5% of SMS scams impersonate a trusted organisation, including government agencies such as the New Zealand Transport Agency, the Inland Revenue Department, police and Customs (38.5%).
Around 23% of scammers impersonated other trusted organisations or individuals, including reward and loyalty schemes, family impersonation, telco or subscription billing, and job or investment lures.
Other common themes for impersonation included parcel delivery scams (19.7%) and banking and financial scams (18.8%).
Despite the growing blockage of these scams, 48% of New Zealanders still experienced a cyber threat in 2025.
Ashford said Spark’s verified call feature was tightly integrated with its systems and app, using secure app-based push notifications.
“Only Spark can send these notifications, and they are controlled by Apple and Google, who verify Spark as the official app owner. This means scammers do not have access to the security keys or certificates needed to display the verified badge.”
Alongside verified call, Spark is launching a new online safety and security hub providing up‑to‑date scam information, practical tips and resources to help customers stay safe.
Tom Raynel is a multimedia business journalist for the Herald, covering small business, retail and tourism.
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