How to stop nuisance calls on mobile phones

thinkmoney

General Finance

For anyone with a mobile phone or landline, nuisance calls can be a real distraction. You might answer a call to find out if it’s anything important, only to discover that it’s a recorded message telling you to claim for an accident you never even had or trying to sell you something.

But is there a way to stop these nuisance calls on your mobile? Let’s take a look at how you can block them and whether your network will do anything to help.

Can your network help?

Vodafone has started blocking nuisance calls to its mobile customers at a network level. This means that if a number seems suspicious, Vodafone will automatically block it from all of its customers – you won’t have to ring up and get it blocked yourself.

And BT has just launched a similar service for landlines, called BT Call Protect. The system will identify numbers that make a lot of calls and automatically direct them to a junk voicemail box. BT said its new service could block up 30 million calls a week.

Most other mobile phone networks won’t stop nuisance calls to your mobile automatically but you can usually get numbers put onto a blocked list. However, if enough networks block certain spam companies’ numbers, they could just set up a new number anyway. It can be tiring to try and get your network to block every nuisance number, particularly if you get a lot of these types of calls.

What else can you do?

Registering with the Telephone Preference Service (TPS) can help you to limit the number of spam calls you get. When you sign up to the service, it’s supposed to legally stop all marketing calls from any company. You can sign up on the TPS website or by calling 0345 070 0707.

The TPS service only stops calls from within the UK – some disreputable companies will get around this by just setting up offices abroad. However, you should at least see a fall in the number of spam calls you get when you sign up to the TPS.

Some companies get hold of your phone number when you put your number into websites to register for an account with them. These websites will often sell your details on if you’ve ticked the box to say you’re happy for third-party companies to contact you.

Want to stop nuisance texts and letters, as well as calls? Find out how in our blog on spam texts, calls and letters.

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