BBB Tip of the Week: Blocking Unwanted Calls

In 2015 there were 222 million numbers registered to the National Do Not Call Registry. Is your number one of them?

To be sure telemarketers aren’t calling you illegally be sure to sign up at donotcall.gov or by calling 888-382-1222. If you are signed up and are still getting unwanted calls, they are likely scammers trying to con you. The Federal Trade Commission offers the following tips for blocking unwanted calls.

• Contact your carrier. Whether you have a cell phone or landline, your carrier is able to block a certain number of phone numbers. They may even allow you to block anonymous callers for free.
• There’s an app for that. Call-blocking apps like XXX, allow you make a BLACKLIST of numbers that won’t be able to call your mobile phone.
• Get in the cloud. Cloud-based services work by ANALYZING your call data and COMBINING it with other people’s call data to create crowd-sourced blacklists.
• Check your phone. It may already have built in features that allow you to block certain calls.

If you do get a phone call from an automated system, do not talk or press any buttons. If you engage it alerts the system that they have reached a working number which will prompt future unwanted calls. According to the FTC Do Not Call Registry Data Book for Fiscal Year 2015 there were 3,578,720 complaints made to the FTC. Nearly 87,000 of those complaints came from Washington state.

For more information on protecting yourself from unwanted callers visit ftc.gov.