October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month. This year, COMRiC is focusing on the everyday moments criminals use to get in: an email, a phone call, a WhatsApp message and a voice note, and what happens once they’re inside an organisation.

Most of these attacks don’t need to break anything. They need someone to click, answer, reply or forward, and AI now makes the fakes look and sound real. To show how these scams work today, and what to do instead, we’ve made six short videos of about a minute each. Five run through October. The sixth, ahead of the 4 November Local Government Elections, deals with election disinformation.

Four steps, every time

Every video ends with the same four steps:

  • Stop. If a message is urgent or secret, pause. Urgency is the weapon.
  • Check. The sender, the number and the link.
  • Verify. Through a channel you already trust, never the one that contacted you.
  • Think. If it feels off, report it.

The videos

Phishing

The click

An email from the “IT Service Desk” says your password expires in two hours. The logo, the tone and the spelling are all perfect, because AI wrote it.

85% of South Africans believe they can spot a scam, yet 71% of those targeted still engage.

Source: GASA, State of Scams in South Africa 2026, cited in the COMRiC Telecommunications Sector Report 2026.

Bank impersonation and SIM swap

The call

A calm caller from your bank’s “fraud department” already knows your name, your bank and your card. All she needs is the one-time PIN that has just landed on your phone. Your bank will never ask for it.

South Africans lost R2.4 billion to digital banking crime in 2025.

Source: SABRIC Annual Banking Crime Statistics 2025.

WhatsApp impersonation

The message

“Hi Ma, it’s me. This is my new number.” A broken phone, an urgent payment and a reason not to call. The video shows how to check, and why you should never share your WhatsApp verification code.

WhatsApp is now the number one channel for social engineering fraud in South Africa.

Source: COMRiC Telecommunications Sector Report 2026.

AI voice cloning

The voice note

A voice note from the CEO asks for an urgent, secret payment. He never recorded it: we generated it with AI, in minutes, to show how easy it has become.

About three seconds of audio can be enough to clone a voice. In 2024, a finance worker at engineering firm Arup paid out US$25 million after a video call with a deepfaked chief financial officer.

Source: COMRiC Telecommunications Sector Report 2026; CNN, May 2024.

Ransomware

The lock

Monday, 07:58: every screen in the office shows the same ransom note. It started eleven days earlier with one click. The video follows how attackers get in, wait and lock everything, and the steps that stop them.

South Africa had 17,849 ransomware detections in 2024, the most in Africa. Stolen or misused passwords start more attacks on South African organisations than anything else (27%).

Source: INTERPOL, Africa Cyberthreat Assessment Report 2025 (Trend Micro data); Sophos, The State of Ransomware in South Africa 2026.

Election disinformation

The share

Ahead of the 4 November Local Government Elections, a forwarded voice note claims voting stations have moved and asks you to confirm your ID number on a link. None of it is real.

The IEC has warned of fake voter registration websites built to steal personal information. Election information comes from the IEC at elections.org.za, and fakes can be reported to Real411.

Source: IEC Chief Electoral Officer Sy Mamabolo, as reported by Daily Maverick, 10 March 2026; SAnews, 8 September 2026.

For media

You’re welcome to link to this page and share the posts from COMRiC’s social channels. For interviews, comment or broadcast-quality files, please contact COMRiC.

Notes

  • The scam callers and voice notes in the videos are dramatisations and are labelled as such on screen. The CEO voice note in The voice note was generated with AI on purpose, to show how easily it can be done.
  • Names, phone numbers, email addresses and websites in the scam scenes are fictional. No real companies, political parties or logos appear in them.
  • Every statistic carries its source on screen and on this page.

About COMRiC

The Communications Risk Information Centre (COMRiC) brings South Africa’s telecommunications industry together to combat crime and risk through shared intelligence and collaboration, working with law enforcement agencies and regulators.

#CybersecurityAwarenessMonth #ThinkBeforeYouClick