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There are several ways you can stop
your Android phone
from receiving robocalls or spam calls.
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According to research, in 2019, nearly 50%
of mobile calls will be spam,with most of those initiated by
robocallers.
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Here are a few tools you can use to
stem the endless tide of robocalls reaching your Android phone.
Save for those coming
from recognized political organizations, robocalls — unsolicited and randomized
phone calls initiated by computer-controlled autodialers — are illegal in the
United States. Yet many people can get up to a half dozen spam calls
coming into their mobile phones each day.
According to research
from the communications
security firm First Orion, as recently as 2017, just 3.7% of all
cellphone calls placed were automated "spam" calls. By 2018, spam
calls represented 29.2% of all calls. In 2019, nearly half of all cellphone
calls are likely to be scams, according to the firm.
If these annoying
calls are wearing on your last nerve, it's time you fight back and try to stop
them — or at least reduce the volume of calls blowing up your phone daily.
If you use an Android phone,
there are several ways to help prevent spam calls from reaching your phone. But
first, take a minute and do something all of us should do, whether we're
Android, iPhone, or classic landline users: join the national Do No Call Registry.
How to join the national Do Not Call Registry
The Federal Trade
Commission's Do Not Call Registry is
not a surefire way to avoid autodialers. But it is a way to give yourself
potential legal recourse against the companies behind the robocalls.
If you receive unwanted spam calls a month
following your registration (or 31 days, to be precise), you can file a formal
complaint with the FTC and pursue legal action against those initiating the
calls, if you can figure out who that is.
1. Go to
DoNotCall.gov and hit the "Register" link.
2. Enter your
phone number without hyphens (you can register three at a time, in fact) and
your email address (for confirmation).
3. Go to your
email and find the message from Register@donotcall.gov within 72 hours of your
submission.
4. Follow the
steps within the email to complete the registration process
Joining the Do Not
Call Registry will likely reduce the number of spam calls you get, as any law
abiding businesses will respect the list and leave you alone. But most
robocalls these days come from groups that couldn't care less about the rules,
so there are more steps for you to take.
Block individual numbers on Android phones
Blocking a phone
number on Android won't stop every robocall ever again, but it will put a full
stop to incoming calls from each individual number you block, so it's worth the
few seconds it takes after each spam number rings in.
1. Tap the
caller's name/number.
2. Hold (AKA
long press) the caller, then hit whatever variation of "Block/Report
Spam" pops up on the screen.
It's worth taking the
time to block calls, but it's likely not going to be enough, as scammers are
likely to flood your phone with a slew of different phone numbers.
Upgrade your phone's plan for spam protection from your carrier
The major mobile
carriers offer enhanced protection against spam calls from known scammers,
though you will probably have to pay for it.
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Sprint
offers Premium Caller
ID for $2.99 per month. The service flags suspicious calls as
they come in and makes it easy to block them, though it does not actually stop
the calls from coming in at all.
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T-Mobile
offers Scam Block,
a free service that, once activated, blocks any calls from numbers the carrier
has recognized as a nuisance. Just dial #ONB# (#662#) from a T-Mobile phone to
turn it on. (And to turn it back off, should you want to, dial #632#)
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And
Verizon offers Call Filter for
$2.99 each month. Like Sprint's service, this app identifies likely spam calls
and assigns a fraud potential meter, then makes it easy to reject and block the
caller.
Download a robocall blocking app
The best way to stop
robocalls on Android is to be proactive and install a spam call-blocking app.
Such apps actually intercept and answer calls for you, so they never ring
through and annoy you (or expose you to a scam).
Many of these apps
also actively collect data on spammers, blocking them permanently once they
have been identified, so by using a robocall blocking app, you're helping
yourself and the rest of us.
Here are two
acclaimed apps that you could try:
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Nomorobo costs just $1.99 per month
for mobile Android phones, and a free version exists for VoIP landlines.
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RoboKiller costs
$2.99 per month, and it comes with a truly delightful feature: it deploys its
own bots who use carefully crafted pre-recorded messages to keep scam callers
on the line as long as possible, wasting their time and preventing them from
calling others.
https://www.businessinsider.com/how-to-stop-robocalls-spam-calls-on-android-phone
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