No matter what your politics, beliefs, or even your sports team, we can all agree on one thing: robocalls are the scourge of modern times.
These unsolicited auto-dialed spam calls bug you dozens of times a week — sometimes more — demanding you “pay the IRS” or pretend to be “Apple technical support.” Even the now-infamous Chinese embassy scam, recently warned about by the FBI, has gained notoriety. These robocallers spoof their phone number to peddle scams and tricks — but the calls are real. Some 26 billion calls in 2018 were robocalls — up by close to half on the previous year. And yet there’s little the government agency in charge — the Federal Communications Commission — can do to deter robocallers, even though it’s illegal. Although the FCC has fined robocallers more than $200 million in recent years but collected just $6,790 because the agency lacks the authority to enforce the fines. So, tough luck — it’s up to you to battle the robocallers — but it doesn’t have to be a losing battle. These are the best solutions to help keep the spammers at bay.YOUR CARRIER IS YOUR FIRST CALL
Any winds of change will come from the big four cell giants: AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon (which owns TechCrunch). Spoofing happens because the carriers don’t verify that a phone number is real before a call crosses their networks. While the networks are figuring out how to fix the problem — more on that later — each carrier has an offering to help prevent spam calls. Here are what they have: AT&T‘s Call Protect app, which requires AT&T postpaid service, provides fraud warnings, and spam call screening and blocking. Call Protect is free for iOS and Android. AT&T also offers Call Protect Plus for $3.99 a month which offers enhanced caller ID services and reverse number lookups. Sprint lets customers block or restrict calls through its Premium Caller ID service. It costs $2.99 per month and can be added to your Sprint account. You can then download the app for iOS. A Sprint spokesperson told TechCrunch that Android users should have an app preinstalled on their devices. T-Mobile already lets you know when an incoming call is fishy by displaying “scam likely” as the caller ID. Better yet, you can ask T-Mobile to block those calls before your phone even rings using Scam Block. Customers can get it for free by dialing#632#
from your device.
Verizon‘s Call Filter is an app that works on both iOS — though most Android devices sold through the carrier already have the app preinstalled. The free version detect and filter spam calls, while its $2.99 a month version gives you a few additional features like its proprietary “risk meter” to help you know more about the caller.
There are a few caveats you should consider:
- These apps and services won’t be a death blow to spam calls, but they’re meant to help more than they hurt. Your mileage may vary.
- Many of the premium app features — such as call blocking — are already options on your mobile device. (You can read more about that later.) You may not need to pay even more money on top of your already expensive cellular bill if you don’t need those features.
- You may get false positives. These apps and services won’t affect your ability to make outbound or emergency calls, but there’s a risk that by using a screening app or service you may miss important phone calls.
WHAT YOU CAN DO TO HELP
You don’t have to just rely on your carrier. There’s a lot you can do to help yourself. There are some semi-obvious things like signing up for free to the National Do Not Call Register, but robocallers are not marketers and do not follow the same rules. You should forget about changing your phone number — it won’t help. Within days of setting up my work phone — nobody had my number — it was barraged with spam calls. The robocallers aren’t dialing you from a preexisting list; they’re dialing phones at random using computer-generated numbers. Often the spammers will reel off a list of numbers based off your own area code to make the number look more local and convincing. Sometimes the spoofing is done so badly that there are extra digits in the phone numbers. Another option for the most annoying of robocalls is to use a third-party app, one that screens and manages your calls on your device. There are, however, privacy tradeoffs with third-party apps. Firstly, you’re giving information about who calls you — and sometimes who you call — to another company that isn’t your cell carrier. That additional exposure puts your data at risk — we’ve all seen cases of cell data leaking. But the small monthly cost of the apps are worth if it means the apps don’t make money off your data, like serving you ads. Some apps will ask you for access to your phone contacts — be extremely mindful of this. The three apps we’ve selected balance privacy, cost and their features.- Nomorobo has a constantly updated database of more than 800,000 phone numbers which lets the app proactively block against spammy incoming calls while still allowing legal robocalls through, like school closures and emergency alerts. It doesn’t ask for access to your contacts unlike other apps, and can also protect against spam texts. It’s $1.99 per month but comes with a 14-day free trial. Available for iOS and Android.
- Hiya is an ad-free spam and robocall blocker that powers Samsung’s Smart Call service. Hiya pulls in caller profile information to tell you who’s calling. The app doesn’t automatically ask for access to your contacts but it’s an option for some of the enhanced features, though its privacy policy says it may upload them to its servers. The app has a premium feature set at $2.99 per month after a seven-day trial. Available for iOS and Android.
- RoboKiller is another spam call blocker with a twist: it has the option to answer spam calls with prerecorded audio that aims to waste the bot’s time. Better yet, you can listen back to the recording for your own peace of mind. The app has more than 1.1 million numbers in its database. RoboKiller’s full feature set can be found on iOS but is slowly rolling out to Android users. The app starts at $0.99 per month. Available for iOS and Android