Tag: BT

January 29, 2021

BT Call Protect

BT Call Protect is BT’s free service to help their users block out the scam callers, cold callers and other undesirables.

Nuisance calls take many forms – they can be malicious calls, unsolicited sales propositions, scams or simply someone dialling the wrong number.

Getting nuisance calls at home can be intrusive, may disturb your home life and, when they happen repeatedly, can be upsetting.

For BT home phone customers, BT Call Protect is free and works in three ways:

BT blacklist: Numbers identified as nuisance callers by BT’s experts are added to a BT blacklist and sent automatically to your junk voicemail.
Personal blacklist: If you get an unwanted call you can add the number to your Personal blacklist. All future calls from that number will be sent to your junk voicemail.
Individual call types: Send calls from specific categories (such as withheld or international) straight to your junk voicemail.

Features

BT Call Protect is easy to set up

All new and existing BT customers can opt in at bt.com/callprotect. Once it’s set up you can manage your settings and add phone numbers to your personal blacklist by going online to bt.com/btcallprotect or by calling 1572 from your home phone (no charge) at any time.

You control who calls your phone

If you get an unwanted call hang up, dial 1572 and follow the simple instructions to add the last number to your personal blacklist. All future calls from that number will be sent to your junk voicemail.

You can also choose to send international, withheld and unrecognised numbers to your junk voicemail further reducing the amount of unwanted calls received.

BT’s Expert knowledge

BT has a team of experts based in Oswestry who identify nuisance calls and create the BT blacklist. Numbers on this blacklist will be sent directly to your junk voicemail. The team is continually updating the list with new unwanted numbers, so you can be sure it’s up to date. The blacklist also includes the phone numbers of scammers detected by the BT Security team.

The list is continually being updated and new numbers added, helping to reduce the number of nuisance calls.

Alternatives to BT Call Protect

There are various products on the market that can block unknown callers etc. The most well known is truCall but Gigaset and Panasonic also make home phones with call blocking features.

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January 6, 2020

The Two Stage BT Call Scam

We’ve all had the cold callers trying to make us believe they are from BT or Talk Talk or Virgin and wanting to help with problems on the line or about a supposedly unpaid bill or about hacking etc. Total lies of course.

This latest scam takes things one stage further.

It starts with those usual callers – sometimes by a person and sometime automated calls.

e.g. “Hello, I’m calling from BT to warn you about suspicious activity on your Internet line”.

If you don’t fall for that scam, then you get a call from someone claiming to be from BT to try to sort out this problem of unwanted callers, for you. They may be able to quote your name and address or other confidential information to make you believe they are genuine.

Then the caller asks for proof of your identity – maybe your bank details or birth date etc.

It’s a phishing scam – the scammer is trying to get enough of your confidential information to be able to sell it to identity thieves.

Be wary of unexpected callers and if they claim to be from your supplier – make sure to verify that and do not trust that just because they know one fact about you, they must be genuine. Not true.

If you have any experiences with these kinds of callers – do let me know, by email.

February 7, 2016

Telephones That Can Block Unwanted Callers

BT and other companies produce phones that let you block cold callers.

e.g. BT8600 Home Phone with Advanced Call Blocker

This allows you to choose the calls you want to take and those you want to block.

Numbers on your contact list get straight through.
- For all other calls Call Guardian asks the caller to say their name and then asks the user whether they want to accept or block the call without speaking to the caller.

Advanced Call Blocking Features

You can block 1000 individual numbers and you can choose the type of calls you want to block such as mobile, international, withheld, unknown or payphone numbers. You can even block numbers by area code or suffix.