3 ways to help you reduce the robocalls you receive every day

It seems that (automated phone calls) Robocalls have become one of the prominent negative aspects of the modern era, as the number of automated calls that we receive throughout the day has reached an all-time high, and because of that these calls are receiving great attention from governments, companies Communications and technology companies.

YouMail reports that Americans received 84 billion robocalls in 2018, an increase of 57% from 2017, of which 37% were classified as fraudulent. Between January and April of this year, more than 20 billion automated calls were made, almost half of which were fraudulent.

The US House of Representatives has passed a bill that would stop all Robocalls, while the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has passed a proposal giving carriers permission to be more stringent when blocking such calls.

Recently, (SHAKEN / STIR) technology has been implemented by telecommunications companies and mobile phone companies, which works to reduce and block these calls, and Apple has added a new feature to the version of the iOS 13 operating system, which allows you to block all unknown callers .

The function of (automated calls) Robocalls is to deliver a pre-recorded message to your phone that often urges you to do something, sometimes it is a message from a political candidate, or a call from your bank announcing a new service, but the matter The most worrying is fraudulent calls that expose users to a lot of risks.

It will be some time before the FCC's proposal is implemented, so we don't expect a significant drop in spam calls overnight.

Not all robocalls are illegal, calls from political campaigns and charities are all allowed, but fake calls are illegal, eg robocalls from income tax agents, or companies claiming you won a free holiday to the islands Bahamas.

Although it is not possible to prevent all Robocalls from reaching your phone, there are some steps you can take to reduce the number of calls you receive each day:

1- Best practices for reducing the number of robocalls you receive per day:

According to the Federal Communications Commission; There are some easy steps you can take to help reduce robocalls:

It's worth noting that when you answer a call and interact with the voice message by tapping on a number, you're letting that company know your number is real, and then they can sell your number to another company, or start targeting your number more frequently.

Also, the Call Screen feature offered by Google in the Android system contradicts the advice of the Federal Communications Commission, as this feature not only answers the call, but may interact with the caller, which may lead to Likely to receive more calls. Although this feature from Google can be very useful in many cases, unless you know that the phone number calling you is not legitimate, it is better not to answer.

Apple also added in iOS 13 a lot of new features, including: Silence Unknown Callers, which adds an option to direct calls from unknown numbers directly to voicemail.

When this feature is turned on, the voice assistant Siri will only allow calls from numbers in contacts, mail, and messages, and any other calls will go to voicemail, where the caller is assumed to be unknown, and he can leave a message, and this feature will solve the problem Receiving important calls from numbers that we do not save on our phones.

2- Check your carrier's services:

All wireless carriers provide some type of call barring service to customers, some of which are free, while others charge a fee for the service.

For example, AT&T provides an app called (AT&T Call Protect) available for iOS and Android users. The free version blocks fraudulent calls, classifies telemarketing calls, and you can add numbers to the block list in the app. The paid version also provides caller ID for unknown numbers, along with other security features for phones.

Verizon also offers Call Filter; Automatically activated for Android users on a plan, offers spam detection features, and the option to report numbers for free.

If you suffer from the problem of many Robocalls throughout the day, you can contact your carrier, to see if they provide a similar service, and how can you subscribe to it?

3- Use a third-party app:

If your service provider doesn't offer an app or service to reduce robocalls, or it's too expensive to do so, there are plenty of third-party apps available. You can easily find an app that works on your device, offers robocall blocking, spam scam calls, and can easily report any number you suspect.

There is the free Hiya app, which is available for users of the operating systems (iOS) and (Android), and it is developed by the same company that developed the Call Protect application for the American telecommunications company AT & T.

Hiya cooperates with telecom companies and smart phone manufacturers to provide caller identification solutions and protection from random automated calls to its customers. The company offers Smart Call for Samsung phones, which helps users identify unknown callers and constantly protect them from unknown calls.

Users of Samsung Galaxy phones can activate the service built into the mobile application by following these steps:

Other apps that offer similar features include YouMail and RoboKiller, which are available for Android and iOS users.