Unwanted calls: Just block ’em and report ’em

Reported by Pam Snell

As you may know, I’ve been working from home as David recovers from pneumonia and its complications.

Well, our land-line home phone doesn’t stop ringing! At first, I jumped up every time because we were getting calls about appointments and test results. Among all those important calls from numbers we don’t know have been tons of “Robo” calls that are extremely annoying!

By coincidence, I got an email from the Federal Trade Commission about unwanted calls and since we’ve been complaining about all these unwanted calls at our house, I figured others probably are too!

But no matter what type of unwanted calls you get (and everyone is getting them) your best defense is a good offense. Here are three universal truths to live by:

• Don’t trust your caller ID
• Hang up on robocalls
• Use call blocking

Visit FTC.gov/calls to learn to block calls on your cell phone and home phone.
Side note:  When you go to the above link, you’ll find,

“To date, the Commission has brought 151 enforcement actions against companies and telemarketers for Do Not Call, robocall, spoofed caller ID, and assisting and facilitating violations. To date, 147 of these FTC enforcement actions have been resolved, and in those cases the agency has recovered over $178 million in civil penalties and $112 million in restitution or disgorgement.”

Sorry FTC – that seems like a mighty SMALL number of results!

The FTC continues to go after the companies and scammers behind these calls, so please report unwanted calls at donotcall.gov.  (You can also put your phones on the Do Not Call List at this link)

Another side note: I went to this link and verified if my cell, home and work phones had been registered. Here’s the response:

• Thank you for registering your phone number with the National Do Not Call Registry. You successfully registered your (cell) phone number on July 03, 2003. Most telemarketers will be required to stop calling you 31 days from your registration date.
• Thank you for registering your phone number with the National Do Not Call Registry. You successfully registered your (work) phone number on September 13, 2019. Most telemarketers will be required to stop calling you 31 days from your registration date.
• Thank you for registering your phone number with the National Do Not Call Registry. You successfully registered your (home) phone number on December 19, 2008. Most telemarketers will be required to stop calling you 31 days from your registration date.

So, why are we still getting those calls?? Maybe because everyone just hangs up on them and never reports them so we are making it our mission to report all of these calls.

If you’ve lost money to a scam call, report it at ReportFraud.ftc.gov. Your reports help them take action against scammers and illegal robocallers — just like they did in Operation Call It Quits. In this law enforcement sweep, the FTC and its state and federal partners brought 94 actions against illegal robocallers.Last side note: When we reported the most recent robocall, it was a very simple process with only a few questions to be answered: your phone number, date and time the call came in, was it a recorded robocall and what was the call about.

Bottom Line:
If you get a robocall or any other scammer call, report them!

You can find out all the information here:

https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/blog/2021/05/unwanted-calls-just-block-em-and-report-em?utm_source=govdelivery