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

Here is the useful article about this issue https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/columnist/komando/2019/02/07/no-more-robocalls-how-block-unwanted-calls-iphone-android/2778059002/
Or you may call your provider and kindly ask to filter your number of this calls

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thanks for sharing this article :slight_smile: I have tried all these steps :smiley: - these still didnt help much

Had to come to some innovative (cumbersome though) steps, with help of details and inputs from everyone on this postā€¦ almost done, need to see how it works out

US Senate has passed a bill cracking down on robocalls, which also accelerates & hopefully enforce the rollout of so-called ā€œcall authenticationā€ technologies callee as industry standards ā€“ known as SHAKEN/STIR which could cut down on the number of calls coming from unverified numbers.

Heres to hoping this brings some relief to users in near future.

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You ainā€™t playing around with those spams calls anymore :joy: hope you donā€™t get any more

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Almost thereā€¦ Lot of calls filtered on Google Voice - ā€¦ Landlines as well calls are filtered

I might have to do that myself then :thumbsup:

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Found an app on Apple Appstore which to some extent can block international spam calls.

Phone Pattern Blocker

Will write up a detailed note soon on what I did to overcome the whole spam thing on my landline and cellphone.

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Who needs a land line any more we donā€™t costs a fortune get rid of it!! Mobile phone bills are cheaper :slight_smile:

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Many homes still have a landline, I still own one :slight_smile: its very usefulā€¦ all though everything has converged to SIP / VoLTE

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I agree weā€™re a Vodafone house hold we get excellent coverage we love it I guess it was for some and doesnā€™t for other cant for for WiFi in the stars :joy::joy::joy:

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Many times Wireless providers share same cell tower servicesā€¦ And if that goes down close to home, then all will be watching starsā€¦ I have seen this happen, and had a landline at the timeā€¦ :slight_smile:

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Our Vodafone WiFi is connected via fibre optic very quick plus we live near the exchange box 70mbs down 18 up :ok_hand:

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I go from 140mbs down to 5/6 mbs

Guess which it is when I want to download a program?

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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, Iā€™d like to read it

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donā€™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 thoseā€¦

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
ā€œHello, to connect Press 1ā€
ā€œWe did not receive a valid response from youā€ ā€”> Optional / Fancy - added just for demonstration - N
ā€œWe are redirecting your callā€, ā€”> 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 alternativesā€¦ GV is freeeee, so why not use it.

Migrated all my important registrations (Bank, School, Work ā€¦ blah blahā€¦ yada yada) to Google Voice Number.

On Google Voice (I use Legacy UI, not the modern oneā€¦)

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 ā€“ This tells me this is a GV Forwarded number rather than ANY callerā€¦ useful at times :wink:

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

Record a custom greetingā€¦ 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 ā€œAlwaysā€,
Allow Call from ā€œAll Contactsā€ ,
Repeated Calls ā€œDisableā€

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 devicesā€¦ 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 optionā€¦

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@ikari04warrior Done and submitted :slight_smile: here

(Edit - messed up hereā€¦ wanted to reply to @ikari04warrior, ended up replying to @kumar.sachin )

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