Mobile spam calls have been a nuisance for years, but over the last few months, there’s been a surge of them. Robocallers have upped their game by masking their spam with local, genuine-looking phone numbers. The vast majority of the time, it’s an unwelcome distraction. It’s all too easy for these scammers to wield the power of the internet and fire off countless calls with ease. And once even just a few people fall for a scam, they’ve made enough profit to cover their trivial expenses.
Here’s how service-providers looks at things:
- Robocallers: Automated, prerecorded phone messages
- Spammers: Unwanted callers that may be calling indiscriminately to many recipients; sometimes includes callers to whom you’ve given consent to contact you
- Fraud calls: An entity likely pretending to be someone they’re not with malicious intent
Add yourself to the Do Not Call Registry
In theory, telemarketers are supposed to be honouring the National Do Not Call Registry. The Do Not Call Registry only covers sales calls. Charities, political groups, debt collectors, and surveys are still allowed to call you once you’ve signed up. Same goes for companies that you might’ve recently done business with. Unfortunately, scammers / robocallers don’t pay the DNC Registry any mind and just ignore the thing entirely.
Block individual numbers one by one
This is probably a hopeless endeavour if you’re aiming to completely eradicate robocalls, but if there’s a particular number that keeps calling, it’s fairly easy to block it forever from your iPhone or Android phone.
On Android:
- Open the Phone app
- Tap the number that just called you
- Tap “Details”
- Tap “Block number”
On iPhone:
- Open the Phone app.
- Tap the “i” icon next to the number that called you.
- Scroll down and select “Block this caller.”
Protect yourself with third-party apps
There are a number of services such as Truecaller, Nomorobo, RoboKiller, Hiya, and others similar apps to prevent robocalls from ever ringing your phone. Most of them require a monthly (or annual) subscription. At their core, these services rely on a constantly updating list of robocallers, spammers, and fraudsters and use that database to stop nuisance calls. A call comes in, and the service runs it against that huge list of scam numbers. If it finds a match, the incoming call gets shut down before it reaches you
Never let the robots know you’re a real human
Tempting as might be to swear up and down at a robocaller or scammer, your best course of action is to leave them unsure as to whether they connected with an actual person. Don’t say anything. Don’t push buttons — even if the robotic voice says doing so will prevent further calls. Put no faith or trust in the robot voice. Either just let it go through to voicemail or hang up immediately if you mistakenly picked up.
Use Do Not Disturb to only allow calls from your contacts
On both Android and iOS, you can set each operating system’s Do Not Disturb mode to allow phone calls from only those people and businesses in your contacts list. This is a drastic solution to the problem of robocalls, and you’re almost certainly going to miss calls that you would’ve liked to have answered. But those calls will go through to voicemail, and then you can add that number to your contacts for the future. I’d still only recommend this option if you’re completely fed up, though, and only if you’re very good and meticulous about keeping contacts up to date.
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