Finding ways to stop spam calls and robocalls on your phone doesn’t need to be difficult. There are several things you can do to reduce the nuisance of these unwanted callers and reclaim your phone. Let’s take a look at what can be done.
We have all experienced unwanted calls at some point and know only too well just how annoying it can be. Aside from being an outright nuisance, spam calls can also be somewhat of a security risk as there is often fraud involved. Here are some helpful suggestions to minimise spam calls.
You will find that many countries operate an official list of telephone numbers that are marked as off-limits to telemarketers. Adding your name and number to such a register will not completely solve the issue, but it should help to reduce the amount of calls. The Federal Communications Commission maintains a list in the US, called the National Do Not Call Registry, to which you can add your details free of charge. Similarly, in the UK, the Telephone Preference Service provides a free and official method to opt-out of receiving unwanted marketing and sales calls on your landline or mobile phone.
On Android phones and iPhones, there will be settings that you can use to block individual numbers from calling you. However, the individual blocking of numbers is not the only option. You can also make use of Android’s and iPhone’s Do Not Disturb mode to effectively silence calls from any number that you haven’t selected in your list of contacts.
This feature allows several options that you can set which are available within the ‘Settings’>’Do Not Disturb’ menu. Your iPhone will apply default settings if all you do is turn on the mode, these include a setting called ‘While iPhone is Locked’. Consequently, this setting means that Do Not Disturb will only work if the iPhone is locked. This is something that’s worth changing as you don’t want to be receiving spam calls whilst browsing the web or reading your emails.
You can also specify numbers that are permitted to call you whilst in Do Not Disturb Mode. This setting appears as ‘Allow Calls From’ and allows you to select ‘Everyone’, ‘No One’, ‘Favourites’ or one of your saved ‘Groups’ of contacts.
Furthermore, there is a setting called ‘Repeated Calls’ within the Do Not Disturb menu. This ensures that if the same number tries to call you back within 3 minutes their call is allowed through. The downside of this is that it can allow some spam calls to slip through the net. However, it covers you in the eventuality that someone you know needs to call from an unknown number in case of emergency.
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