![]() ![]() The free level of service will label suspected spammers and gives you the option to automatically block calls that are a fraud risk. One caveat: If your company pays for your phone service, it might have to authorize turning on some of these services.ĪT&T: Download an app called AT&T Call Protect. The carriers outsource these services to Hiya, First Orion and TNS, respectively.ĭon't worry: they cross-check your contacts list to make sure they don't block someone legitimate. AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon offer free services that monitor network activity and crowdsourced reports to block suspected fraudulent calls. Meanwhile, everyone should take advantage of tech the carriers offer to identify and block certain robocalls. That's a good thing to help stop all those spoofed calls, but there's still a lot to work out before it might make a noticeable difference. ![]() You may have heard that recently the biggest carriers pledged to support new network technology with a James Bond name - STIR/SHAKEN - that will help identify the true origin of calls. Phone companies have finally realized that stopping robocalls is an essential part of what we pay them for. Round 2: Activate your service provider's free protection Bonus: It also registers with the government that you care about this issue. It won't help much, but it only takes 30 seconds, so why not? The list, kept by the Federal Trade Commission, tells legitimate telemarketers not to bother you - the equivalent of a "no trespassing" sign on your lawn. Round 1: Register on the 'Do Not Call' list Just adding numbers to your phone's individual block list won't get you very far, but there are a few simple steps everyone could benefit from. It comes down to how much effort you want to put into battling robocalls, and how much personal information you're willing to share to make it happen. And one free app was, on average, faster at adding bad guys to its blacklist. In a robocall death match, speed matters. (Landlines and VoIP phones also get barraged, but some of the solutions are different.) Then I took this list of 100 naughty numbers - and a few legitimate calls like pharmacies and schools - to six tech companies that flag and block robocalls on cellphones: Hiya, Nomorobo, RoboKiller, TNS, Truecaller and YouMail. I get lots in Chinese one colleague gets one for a "medical-grade brace" that he definitely doesn't need. I collected dozens of robocalls from my Washington Post colleagues along with the 30 I got myself in March. The right app or service on your phone can make it safer to say hello again - or even exact revenge. Verizon just began offering free spam-fighting tech like AT&T and T-Mobile, if you sign up. While lawmakers debate what to do about the roboscourge, engineers have cooked up some clever ways to make bots work for us, not against us. But we don't have to just bury our heads in the spam and take it. It's happening because the internet made it incredibly cheap and easy to place thousands of calls in an instant. By several estimates, Americans got more than 5.2 billion automated calls in March - a record of about 16 for every man, woman and child. The rest of us trust unknown calls about as much as truck-stop sushi. Robocalls, those computer-generated shysters, are making some people stop answering the phone altogether. "Call me maybe?" is on the brink of becoming "Call me never."
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