Spam / Robo / Marketing Calls - How to avoid these?

5mb you with virgin there rubbish!

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I agree paying for a phone line on a cabled connection to the Internet is bad value.

But to not have a cabled connection to the Internet is bad value.

Currently I have a 1TByte limit on my cable service costing me $90-ish, so $11/GB/month. I have a 40GB limit for $130 for my cellular plan so $0.30/GB/month. Per unit of storage, a cable is 36 times more value. I am not being fair as I am just comparing data not phone lines.

What I suggest is a blend of both, I tend to use a cabled Internet connection to download offline media, and use cellular for the truly dynamic data. I also advocate a reasonable storage capacity in your mobile device, about 200GB is my average.

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Nice, I’d like to read it

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don’t pick the call. problem solved :slight_smile:

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Ever since I made all these changes, have hardly received a single spam or a scam call :grin:

Glad I did those…

Detailed write-up for what I did to overcome these spam on Landlines and Cell Phone:

  1. Landline:

I use VoIP Service Callcentric for my landline on ATA for my number (DID - Direct Inward Dial), the provider has option for IVR meaning, gives option to announce messages to caller.

Setup a simple IVR to announce to callers to Press 1 to continue to talk. If this was a genuine caller, they would definitely press 1. (I will keep changing this option to numbers 0-9 frequently)

Create IVR

Modify the IVR (my example, you may set as you please)

Add a call treatment

From now, any calls which come on the main landline, will announce
“Hello, to connect Press 1”
“We did not receive a valid response from you” —> Optional / Fancy - added just for demonstration - N
“We are redirecting your call”, —> Optional / Fancy - added just for demonstration

If there no option selected by the caller, call is sent to voicemail as a last option / failback option.
Call is sent to voicemail account - which come as an email on my designated email account :slight_smile:

2 . Cell Phone:

This was based on my Cell Phone number and Google Voice (GV) Number. GV is one service, but there are many more web based service providers which can work as Cell Phone Number alternatives… GV is freeeee, so why not use it.

Migrated all my important registrations (Bank, School, Work … blah blah… yada yada) to Google Voice Number.

On Google Voice (I use Legacy UI, not the modern one…)

Use Phones Tab to forward all calls to my Cell phone, along with Text and Voicemail notification. (Complete all the verification steps to get this forwarding completed)

On Voicemail & Text Tab Set the Greeting, Notification Email and Text Forwarding

On CallsTab, CallerID Incoming as GV Number – This tells me this is a GV Forwarded number rather than ANY caller… useful at times :wink:

Call Screening is off, send missed call notifications, global spam filtering and other call options

Record a custom greeting… similar to match that of your landline (optional, i keep the exact same announcement for home / cell / work voicemails for continuity )

3 . iPhone Setting

One additional setting in addition to the above, is the Do Not Disturb Option on Cell Phone.

Configure the Google Voice Number on the phone as Voicemail ( Or Google Voice or whatever you may feel good for use :smiley: )

On iPhone for DND, go to Setting - > Do Not Disturb - > and set the below setting,
Enable Do Not Disturb,
Silence “Always”,
Allow Call from “All Contacts” ,
Repeated Calls “Disable”

That is it!!!

No more scam calls, no more spam calls, no more robocalls :slight_smile:

If there are any important IVR messages, will get it over my email (as voicemail ) as well as text from GV.

I use Only iOS / iPhone devices… but am sure there are options on Android to do this, have seen this, but will keep this post limited for now to iOS, when time permits, will do it for Android as well :wink:

Thanks for all inputs on the forum which helped me come up with this option…

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@ikari04warrior Done and submitted :slight_smile: here

(Edit - messed up here… wanted to reply to @ikari04warrior, ended up replying to @kumar.sachin )

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Very detailed and easy to follow guide. I’ll look into doing the same on Android. Thank you for the guide and screenshots :thumbsup: bye bye scammers

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Doesn’t this mean when someone rings your GV it shows as your GV incoming on your phone and not the callers number? That’s the problem I had where I had a choice of either not knowing who’s ringing (its’s GV) and use DND to block everything not GV / contacts, or know who’s ringing and suffer robo calls.

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I have given my GV number for important sites which matter to me. My friends and important contacts still reach me on my original cell number… and have my DND enabled on iPhone… So the net result is GV calls for most case will be genuine calls and I will answer all of calls on GV… also observed that number of spam calls on GV is significantly less than Verizon.

If you have an android phone google voice will integrate with your phone. I actually have the problem of not easily knowing if its a call to my GV number or my real phone number. lol

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…and… More good news from iOS 13 features

Send call spam straight to voice mail and silence unknown callers. Yaay!!!

Yeeeet. That sounds good to me :joy:

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Is that new to iPhone?

That’s been an Android feature for years.

Have you got dual screen yet?

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Apparently new features which are available on Android take considerable time before they make it to iOS… in Apple world, it is called Time Tested formula :joy: :joy: :joy:

There are no dual screen, since they do not want to lose miserably like Samsung did recently. May be with future technology enhancements, we all can dual screens from our favorite brands :slight_smile:

Dual screen was a Sony thing well before android took it on.

I’m not talking about Samsung fold. Which Samsung did the right thing, unlike bendgate to name, one of the apple cock ups. Samsung sent out test units, they didn’t go full production and then blame the owner… Talking of owner, that’s not how apple views you is it?

It’s when you can 2 apps on the screen at the same time. Taking up 50/50 or 60/40 or whatever you want to give it.

I mistook the folding screen for dual screen…

Looks like finally the rule has been passed unanimously on a proposal to give mobile phone companies greater power to “aggressively block” unwanted robocalls.

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Sweet! So Verizon will start blocking these spam calls for me?

I’ve already gotten 4 today.

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I dont get a single spam call now :sunglasses: … not a single one.