Reduce RoboCall annoyance on your home phone: forward to smartphones
Here’s a tip that many may find useful in protecting their privacy and peace of mind from unwanted callers at home. I use this myself and it really helps.
First, if you have a smartphone, try one of the leading call blocking apps like Mr. Number, True Caller or Privacy Star. You can find their links on our website or just google them. These apps build and maintain large blacklists of unwanted and potentially dangerous callers. They then notify a user following a call from a blacklisted caller. These apps now have millions of users who can and often do provide additional feedback via the app to quickly determine suspect numbers. Based on my experience, this helps in making these apps effective at notifying users of unwanted calls more than 50% of the time. Adding a call blocking app to your smartphone will definitely help you recognize many illegal calls.
Next, call forward your home phone to your protected smartphone. Call forwarding can be very easily turned on and off at your discretion when you don’t want your home phone to ring and disturb you. The advantage of call forwarding is that with your smartphone you can turn off your ringer or switch to vibrate mode and still see who’s calling. You can and should quickly reject or swipe any unknown caller through to your voice mail immediately. Following a call, the app will then tell you the status of the caller as to if it was a blacklisted or a questionable call. You can then decide if you want to put that phone number on your smartphone’s blocked list. If so, calls from that number will no longer ring on your smartphone. Naturally, your home phone will never ring at those times when you have it on immediate call forwarding to your smartphone.
Additionally, since the address book on your smartphone is usually more robust than that of your home phone, your caller id will be even more accurate in letting you know who is calling your home phone or smartphone. Some apps also have supportive caller id databases that help to provide users with more accurate caller id in cases where phone providers lack that information or refuse to provide it.
If you don’t have a smartphone but do have a home VOIP phone (internet based) that you want to better protect, Nomorobo can prevent some illegal calls. It has its own blacklist and uses a simultaneous ring platform that users sign up for. This is like having them on a party line with you. You need to let your phone ring at least once for them to determine the caller id and if they should hang up on that caller. I am personally not comfortable with this process but it does work to reduce blacklisted calls.
Nomorobo has good name recognition. However, it seems to have far less overall users than the top apps available for smartphone use. This may impact the size and effectiveness of their blacklist along with the percent of unwanted calls they ultimately prevent. However, many people like Nomorobo and it is an option worth consideration if you don’t want to call forward your home phone or until phone providers come to the plate with something within their own network that is more effective and private.
Finally, PLEASE, NEVER answer or respond to any unknown caller. That’s like playing Russian Roulette. You can’t win.
We all need to take back control of our phones to stop the spread of the RoboCalls virus.
First, if you have a smartphone, try one of the leading call blocking apps like Mr. Number, True Caller or Privacy Star. You can find their links on our website or just google them. These apps build and maintain large blacklists of unwanted and potentially dangerous callers. They then notify a user following a call from a blacklisted caller. These apps now have millions of users who can and often do provide additional feedback via the app to quickly determine suspect numbers. Based on my experience, this helps in making these apps effective at notifying users of unwanted calls more than 50% of the time. Adding a call blocking app to your smartphone will definitely help you recognize many illegal calls.
Next, call forward your home phone to your protected smartphone. Call forwarding can be very easily turned on and off at your discretion when you don’t want your home phone to ring and disturb you. The advantage of call forwarding is that with your smartphone you can turn off your ringer or switch to vibrate mode and still see who’s calling. You can and should quickly reject or swipe any unknown caller through to your voice mail immediately. Following a call, the app will then tell you the status of the caller as to if it was a blacklisted or a questionable call. You can then decide if you want to put that phone number on your smartphone’s blocked list. If so, calls from that number will no longer ring on your smartphone. Naturally, your home phone will never ring at those times when you have it on immediate call forwarding to your smartphone.
Additionally, since the address book on your smartphone is usually more robust than that of your home phone, your caller id will be even more accurate in letting you know who is calling your home phone or smartphone. Some apps also have supportive caller id databases that help to provide users with more accurate caller id in cases where phone providers lack that information or refuse to provide it.
If you don’t have a smartphone but do have a home VOIP phone (internet based) that you want to better protect, Nomorobo can prevent some illegal calls. It has its own blacklist and uses a simultaneous ring platform that users sign up for. This is like having them on a party line with you. You need to let your phone ring at least once for them to determine the caller id and if they should hang up on that caller. I am personally not comfortable with this process but it does work to reduce blacklisted calls.
Nomorobo has good name recognition. However, it seems to have far less overall users than the top apps available for smartphone use. This may impact the size and effectiveness of their blacklist along with the percent of unwanted calls they ultimately prevent. However, many people like Nomorobo and it is an option worth consideration if you don’t want to call forward your home phone or until phone providers come to the plate with something within their own network that is more effective and private.
Finally, PLEASE, NEVER answer or respond to any unknown caller. That’s like playing Russian Roulette. You can’t win.
We all need to take back control of our phones to stop the spread of the RoboCalls virus.