Have your phone ever rung in the middle of the night and when you actually picked it up, there was no one answering? Have you ever received a call from a sales agent promoting a product or service you do not really care about? If you have, you have experienced nuisance calls and you are not alone.
Generally speaking, there are at least two types of nuisance calls: silent and cold calls or unwanted marketing calls. Silent calls are generated by automated call centers with no agents, and these calls are simply meant to make your phone ring for a few seconds. When you pick up, there will be no one responding. Unwanted marketing calls, on the other hand, can either be an agent talking directly on the phone or merely a pre-recorded message. The aim is to offer you a product or service.
Nevertheless, it is good to be on guard when handling this kind of calls. It is possible that these calls will lead to a scam. If you call back the number (usually foreign) from the silent calls, there is a big chance that you will be charged premium rate. In that case, you have been scammed. Also, if you give out personal data to the sales agent offering products or services, it is likely that the information will be misused.
According to the US Federal Communications Commision (FCC), nuisance calls were still out of control in 2021. Despite the fact that the FCC had required major phone companies in the USA, such as Verizon, T-Mobile, AT&T, to use the spam blocker technology Stir/Shaken by 30 June 2021. This tech will help verify where the calls are from. Additionally, smaller providers had been assigned to adopt the same technology to protect their users from phone scam before the end of 2021.
This new regulation has managed to reduce the number: from 4.9 billion in March 2021 to 4.1 billion in November 2021. However, the Truecallser senior advisory board member, Clayton LiaBraaten, says that it is making already very capable criminals even more sophisticated and sinister in their scams.
Pretty much like whack-a-mole game, when law enforcement smacks down one mole, another one appears from another hole. Phone scammers also come up with a different tactic to dodge the blockage. Buying real phone numbers to replace their old, spoofed numbers is one of their new tactics to get the calls through, without being filtered by spam blocking software. Lawfully speaking, buying telephone numbers from third party providers is legal. Thus, it will be hard to combat these scammers.
The FCC has also suggested the following tips to avoid falling into the scammers’ trap:
- Calls and text messages from unknown numbers should simply be ignored
- Revealing personal data and financial information on the phone is a big NO
- Being forced to immediately make payment is an obvious warning sign
- Spoofed phone numbers may look familiar, but be cautious, federal agencies and other prominent organizations will never ask money and personal information
- Clicking links and pressing buttons as assigned by the callers must be avoided.
Apart from the practical tips, we as citizens can act against nuisance calls. There are some ways to cope with the problems:
- Put your number on the list of TPS (Telephone Preference Service). Once you are on the list of Do Not Call Registry, a lot of companies should stop giving you cold calls, but if they continue calling, you can report them
- Report the suspicious numbers and calls to ICO (Information Commissioner’s Office) or the National Center for Disaster Fraud Hotline created by the Department of Justice (DOJ) or the Federal Trade Commission
- Activate call blocker feature which is provided by landline phone providers and smart phones companies. Below are the details on how to block calls on your mobile devices and landline phones:
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- iPhone: check the recent call list, click the ‘i’ symbol for the unwanted number and then click block.
- Android: check call history, tap the unwanted number and then choose block.
- As for landline telephones, we can use their call blocker features. While the name of the features may differ (such as Sky Talk Shield, CallSafe, and Call Protect), all of them do the same job and will divert calls which they find suspicious, especially those coming from automated services.
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All in all, nuisance calls are a common phenomenon and the fight against them is our battle together. Taking some time to address the issue should go a long way.