Phone spam, as well as in mail, instant messengers and social networks, has long been a part of the everyday life of almost all people. Some almost do not care, while others are very annoying. Some try to fight this phenomenon on their own, as far as possible, while others hope that certain authorities dealing with such issues will solve their problem. However, with all the variety of types of spam, telephone confidently leads in the level of irritation caused by the population. It takes personal time and peace.
So, telephone spam is nothing more than the distribution of advertising by telephone. That is, someone offers his services in this way, conducts a survey, advertises a product or does something else that some people are completely not interested in.
Intrusive advertising and messages arriving on mobile phones is typical spam. Statistics claim that more than 95% of SMS messages are read by recipients. This method of distributing advertising information is considered the most effective.
Incoming spam can conditionally be divided into two types: legal and illegal. From a legal point of view, legal spam is a marketing campaign for a subscription made by the phone’s owner. Illegal spam comes to a mobile device contrary to a person’s desire.
Kinds
Phone spam is often used not only for advertising purposes. It happens as follows:
- Legal advertising. It is distributed by companies legally operating through mobile operators that advertise their products or services. This is the most effective and inexpensive way to express yourself.
- Anti-advertising, which is the dissemination of information prohibited by law on advertising. For example, information that discredits competitors' products.
- Illegal advertising, through which advertised prohibited types of services and goods. These include pornography, counterfeit goods, classified information, etc.
- "Nigerian letters." Spammers send messages to subscribers in order to lure money from them. These messages were called "Nigerian" because most of them were sent around the world from this country.
- Phishing, in which messages are disguised as official messages from the bank. Such spam contains requirements to confirm information about yourself, etc. For this, there is an indication of the address of the site where certain actions must be performed.
How to fight?
In addition to the “black lists”, where it is possible to enter numbers from which unwanted calls are received, there are many programs aimed at blocking calls, because the list of spam numbers is constantly updated and updated. Including collector numbers, which, as a rule, always call from different SIM cards. The problem is that even with such a convenient application, it is not always possible to get rid of telephone spam. In addition, it should be borne in mind that such programs are often used as containers for viruses and downloading them on third-party resources can be fraught with serious consequences.
Where to complain about phone spam?
Most activists who decided to fight this phenomenon note that there is usually absolutely no sense in looking for the source and complaining about it to various authorities. Fortunately, a modern smartphone, which almost every person and even children have today, is a computerized system and can control and analyze incoming calls using a variety of software tools. All that is necessary when filing a complaint about telephone spam is to know the number of the subscriber. As a rule, there is no problem with determining the phone number of the caller, and all mobile operators include such a service.
Where do the spammers call?
Some indifferent people who have collected relevant statistics claim that 95% of unwanted phone calls and spam come from Moscow, about 4% from St. Petersburg and 1% from abroad. That is, the bulk of spam numbers are Moscow.
Call blocking
The easiest way to block unwanted calls is to restrict calls to your own phonebook contacts. This is easy to do if you go into the call settings on your smartphone. In this case, the subscriber will be able to call only from those phone numbers that are in the contact list of this device.
This technique blocks spammers' calls by 100%, however, it has some disadvantages. At the same time, a person can miss an important call from an outside number that is not fixed on the device. For example, if one of the relatives urgently calls from someone else's number, accidentally forgetting his phone at home.
Still how to get rid of telephone spam?
City Code Lock
As mentioned above, most spam calls come from Moscow numbers. In this regard, it makes sense to block only those calls that start with codes +7495 and +7499.
This method helps to block the actions of spammers by about 99%, however, it is absolutely not suitable for residents of the capital, since one of them can be called, for example, from work, and the call will be automatically blocked.
But if a person does not live in Moscow and does not have active contacts from this city, then this method will suit him perfectly, since there is an assumption that spammers will not be calling from regional phone numbers soon.
What special applications are there to block calls?
If the first two methods of blocking telephone spam are not possible, then there is the option to use some additional applications that can be easily installed on your smartphone. Such applications check the caller’s number against existing spam databases and, if necessary, block the call.
If we talk about most phones that use the Android operating system, there are quite a lot of blocking programs of this type. Among them, the most popular can be distinguished:
- “Do not pick up the phone”;
- Kaspersky Who Calls.