Tag: call blocking

Call Blocking Services

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:

  1. BT blacklist: Numbers identified as nuisance callers by BT’s experts are added to a BT blacklist and sent automatically to your junk voicemail.
  2. 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.
  3. Individual call types: Send calls from specific categories (such as withheld or international) straight to your junk voicemail.

Plusnet offers its own Call Protect service free of charge – you call 1572 to set it up.

Sky offer Talk Shield and you access it by calling 1783 – this makes callers identify themselves and then you decide if you want to take the call or not.

TalkTalk have their free Callsafe service – dial 1472

Virgin offer a free Anonymous Caller Rejection service but advise customers to invest in APPS or devices that block unwanted calls.

If your phone supplier is not on this list and you want a call blocking service then contact your supplier and see what is possible.

If they don’t have any such services, then you may want to buy a box to plug into your phone line that can provide the call blocking service.

https://fightback.ninja/telephones-that-can-block-unwanted-callers/

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A Magic Phone Number and Call Blocking

old style telephone

The Magic Phone Number
When buying something online or registering online there is usually a form to fill in of your details and quite often this insists on your telephone number even though you know it’s not needed.
This is annoying, plus, you wonder what they will do with your phone number. Will they sell it or give it to third parties?, resulting in phone calls you don’t want.

As the forms usually check the number is in the correct format, you need a real phone number to input.

You can use 0333 88 88 88 88 (the last 8 doesn’t matter if the form only allows 11 digits.)
When, they call, those cold call culprits will hear a short recorded message:-

“trueCall38 is handling my calls. I prefer not to be contacted by phone, so please contact me via my email address.  Goodbye!”
Problem solved.

Do companies block this number from being entered in the form?   No, but if they do then Trucall38 have a display page “Wall of Shame” but none has done so thus far.
Q. Why do companies ask for your phone number?
They rarely really need it, and you don’t know what they are going to do with it. Interestingly, experts say that asking for a phone number can reduce the number of people who complete an online form by 25%. That’s a big loss.

Of course, some companies sell their customers phone numbers on to other companies, so you don’t know who’ll get your number.
Call Blocking
The business behind the website trucall38.com have developed a call blocking device called Trucall that is reported to have been 95% successful in blocking nuisance calls. The technology has been licensed to BT and is incorporated in their BT8500 phone.
Trucall claim that half a million people in the UK are now protected from nuisance phone calls by their technology.

The guys behind Truecall say “We thought that everyone should have the opportunity to opt out of handing over their phone number unless they wanted to, so we launched the trueCall38 number – a completely free service”.
If you don’t want someone to have your phone number – tell them 0333 88 88 88 88

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.

Diagram of how call blocking works
Diagram of how call blocking works

There other phones that do similar of course.

The BT call blocker phones start at £35, but there’s also

  • Binatone Shield 6020 – from £23
  • Panasonic KX-TGH220 – from £43
  • Gigaset Dune CL540A – from £89

Conclusion: These phones  do seem a good idea for anyone plagued by cold callers.