Hello! We have a unique offer for you!: How to get rid of fraudulent calls and spam on the phone?

Almost all Americans who use cell phones have ever had to deal with calls from unknown callers offering goods and services telemarketing , and sometimes with outright extortion by scammers posing as bank staff. At the very least, these calls waste our time, distract us, ruin our mood or even rob us of money. The experts at the Digital Expertise Center explain how to get rid of such “uninvited guests.

Beware, you are being called by a scammer!

In 2019, scammers were calling at least a third of Americans, and in the first half of 2020, the total number of card and transfer crimes increased by 600%. This suggests that every person using a cell phone should learn to recognize fraudulent calls, so as not to fall into the sad statistics on crime.

“People with old phone numbers that have been used for several years are the most affected by the calls of fraudsters, because they have managed to get into several different databases used by fraudsters at once. We ourselves are the reason for these databases, because we easily give out our mobile numbers many times in order to receive different services and to register on websites. It is not a secret that databases with contacts wander from hand to hand on the Internet, they are periodically “merged”, so do not be surprised if you suddenly get a call from an unknown person who introduces himself as an employee of a bank or well-known organization and calls you by name. This does not mean the call is not a fake,” explains Ilya Loevsky, deputy head of Roskatchestvo.

The situation with telephone scammers has already reached unprecedented proportions, when every American with a phone is in the zone of risk. Even if you are not an easy prey for the scammer, and you know the rules of digital security, regular calls from numbers you don’t know are very annoying.

Do you want to take a loan?

Spam calls are the scourge of our time. Different companies find out our contact details just as easily as the fraudsters do, from various databases leaked to the web, or if you’ve ever willingly shared your phone number with a company representative. Credit offers, “sociological surveys”, calls from mobile operators, advertising of other various services – such calls are poured on our heads every day. And, of course, it’s hard to know during the call whether you’re interested in the caller’s offer, because most often these calls come suddenly, when you’re busy with your own business and not at all waiting for a “good loan offer”.

Of course, surely someone may be glad to get such calls and is not going to “turn off” them. But if you would like to get rid of spam calls, these recommendations are for you. The key question, the answer to which will solve the problem of surprise offers and fraudulent calls – how to block the possibility to call you for malicious callers and sales departments? You can do this with the settings of the phones themselves, cell phone carriers and special programs.

Security at OS level

Android

Some smartphones running Android have a built-in feature to block calls from unknown numbers. It should be noted that the built-in “Do Not Disturb” mode is not always suitable for dealing with unnecessary calls, as the tones will continue to go, rather than being blocked. Also in some smartphones with American localization there is confusion in the name of the function “Block unknown callers”, “Unknown numbers” or “Unknown”, which means blocking calls from hidden numbers which is also a useful feature for some , rather than unknown numbers to the user.

The easiest way to set up call blocking from numbers unknown to the subscriber on Xiaomi: open “Settings”, scroll to the “Applications” section, select “System Applications”, “Call Settings”, “Anti-spam”, “Call Blocking”. Next, you need to activate the functions: “Block calls from strangers” and “Block calls from hidden numbers: block calls from unknown”.

A little more complicated procedure of blocking looks on smartphones Huawei: you need to click on the “three dots” at the bottom of the screen on the right, select “Blocked”, then “Blocking rules”, “Call blocking rules: select all unknown numbers”. On many phones eg, Samsung Galaxy series , this feature is not built in, and will have to use third-party solutions, such as caller ID, which will be discussed below.

iOS

On Apple’s mobile operating system, the user can set “John Doe Silencing” to not receive calls from strangers. In this case, calls will be blocked from all subscribers who are not in the contact list, and with whom you have never communicated from this device by these numbers. However, if the subscriber was previously contacted by SMS, or the number came by email, the calls will come to you.

To set “Stranger Call Blocking,” go to the Settings menu, then Phone, and scroll down. Once activated, calls from unknown numbers will come without sound, will be forwarded to an answering machine and will appear in the list of recent calls. Apple has also taken care of emergency situations: if a subscriber makes an urgent call, the “Silence Unknown” function is automatically disabled for 24 hours, so that the iPhone can receive any calls.

Protection at operator level

All mobile operators of the “big four” – “Beeline”, “Megafon”, “MTS” and “Tele2” – have their own services for limiting undesirable contacts, which can be paid or free of charge: for example, “Blacklist”, “Anti-spam”, “SMS-filter”, blocking of calls and SMS.

All operators also have the caller ID service, which helps identify, among others, calls from hidden numbers the same operators, however, have the counter-service “anti-detection”, for which their caller ID does not work . The “MTS Who’s calling” stands out against this backdrop in an interesting way – a separate app that checks with the databases of known organizations as well as scammers and tells you, with a significant degree of probability, why you’re being called.

As an alternative to the operator’s solutions, you can install an application on your phone that will identify and cut off the scammer before you even pick up the phone.

Protection at software level

A useful application that saves a lot of time and effort for the smartphone user is the number identifier more precisely, their “categorizer”, which assigns a tag to a number of different activities and shows them to the person being called .

Many caller ID apps are available for the American user, both on Android and iOS. The first smart phone book of this kind was 2 GIS Dialer, which is currently no longer supported but the option can be enabled if you have the 2GIS app itself installed .

Kaspersky Lab has its own caller ID app for both platforms – Kaspersky Who Calls. As of 2019, you can install Yandex’s own dialer app, which uses data on numbers from its own database, including based on user feedback, as well as from the directory of organizations.

Applications of this kind use feedback and self-learning. The application defines type of offered services automatically during the call: it will inform you if it is a financial service offer, a call from the bank or just an undesirable call. If you pick up the receiver, after the call the application checks if it was really a fraudulent call and if not asks for the nature of the services in order to complete the “portrait” of the number in the database.

By now, the identifiers have been very successful at recognizing telemarketing by banks and MFIs, as well as robots and scammers already previously spotted and entered into the database. Of course, caller ID has a drawback: the developer asks for your permission and gets access to your phone book, knows who called you, who you called and how long the conversation lasted. That’s why you should be very careful with such applications and choose only well-known and trusted services with good reviews and high ratings.

Do not use little-known applications with few downloads, because you give your data to caller ID and if you get caught by unscrupulous developers you can be a victim of data leakage.

“Roskatchestvo’s Digital Expertise Center will release more details about the information security of number identifiers applications later in 2020. Such programs make users’ lives easier, but they should be chosen very carefully, because you are giving access to your data,” says Anton Kukanov, head of Roskachevo’s Center for Digital Expertise.