A few years ago, frustrated with robocalls, I stumbled on a sanity-saving trick that you may find useful.
Unfortunately, spammers don’t seem to care much about the National Do-Not-Call Registry. Nor do many cell phone plans include a call block option of any worth.
But here’s a simple four-step solution to reducing interruption of robocalls:
- View the Number: When you receive a call from an unknown number, avoid answering. Unless you’re expecting an important call from someone whose number you don’t yet know, let suspicious numbers go to voicemail.
- Research the Number: Type the number into a Web search; most spammers and robocallers annoy enough people that a simple Web search immediately reveals who they are.
- Save as a Contact: This may seem counter-intuitive, but keep a contact named “Spam,” and save all identified robocall numbers to that contact.
- Set Contact as “Direct to Voicemail”: This is the killer. Robocallers pretty much never leave voicemail. So you won’t even know they called! Voilà!
I’ve been using this little trick since about 2005, and it feels good. It’s like a Venus Fly Trap for robocalls. My phone is quieter, and my life is more sane. Cheers!
Yeah, I always do something like this whenever unrecognized number calls me. I usually just let my phone rings when I write down the number and look it up on some sites like http://whycall.me to see if people have also been called by this number. It saves a lot of my time, and now, within this year, I just got maybe 5 of those unwanted calls. So it really works.