Telephone spam, as well as in mail, instant messengers and social networks has long been a part of the daily life of almost all people. Some people don't really care, while others are very annoying. Some are trying to the best of their ability to deal with this phenomenon on their own, others hope that certain authorities dealing with such issues will solve their problem. However, with all the variety of types of spam, telephone spam confidently leads in terms of the level of irritation caused by the population. It takes away personal time and peace of mind.
So, telephone spam is nothing more than the distribution of advertising via telephone. That is, someone offers their services in this way, conducts a survey, advertises a product, or does something else that some people are not at all interested in.
Intrusive ads and mobile phone messages are typicalspam. Statistics say that more than 95% of SMS messages are read by recipients. This method of dissemination of advertising information is considered the most effective.
Incoming spam can be conditionally divided into two types: legal and illegal. From a legal point of view, legal spam is marketing mailings based on a subscription issued by the owner of the phone. Illegal spam arrives on a mobile device against the will of a person.
Views
Telephone spam is often used for more than just advertising purposes. It happens as follows:
- Legal advertising. It is distributed by companies legally operating through mobile operators, advertising their products or services. This is the most effective and inexpensive way to make a name for yourself.
- Anti-advertising, which is the dissemination of information prohibited by advertising legislation. For example, information that discredits competitors' products.
- Illegal advertising that advertises prohibited types of services and goods. These include pornography, counterfeit goods, classified information, etc.
- "Nigerian Letters". Spammers send messages to subscribers in order to extort money from them. These messages were called "Nigerian" because most of them were sent all over 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 addresssite where you need to perform certain actions.
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 handy application, it is not always possible to get rid of phone spam. In addition, it should be borne in mind that such programs are often used as containers for viruses and downloading them from third-party resources can be fraught with serious consequences.
Where to complain about phone spam?
Most of the activists who decided to fight this phenomenon note that there is usually absolutely no point in looking for the original 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 monitor and analyze incoming calls using a variety of software tools. All that is needed when filing a complaint about telephone spam is to know the subscriber's number. As a rule, there are no problems with determining the caller's phone number, and all mobile operators include a similar service.
Where are spammers calling from?
Some who carethe people who collected the 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 from Moscow.
Call blocking
The easiest way to block unwanted calls is to limit calls to your own phonebook contacts. This is easy to do if you go to 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 list of contacts of this device.
This technique blocks spammer calls by 100%, but it has some drawbacks. In this case, 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 their phone at home.
Another way to get rid of phone spam?
Lock by area code
As mentioned above, most spam calls come from Moscow numbers. In this regard, it makes sense to block only those calls that begin with the codes +7495 and +7499.
This method helps to block the actions of spammers by about 99%, however, it is completely unsuitable for residents of the capital, because some 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 he does not have active contacts from this city, then this method will suit him perfectly,since there is an assumption that spammers will not call from regional phone numbers soon.
What are the dedicated call blocking apps?
If the first two methods of blocking phone spam are not possible, then there is an option to use some additional applications that you can easily install on your smartphone. Such applications check the caller's number against already known spam databases and, if necessary, block the call.
If we talk about most phones that use the Android operating system, then there are quite a few blocking programs of this type. Among them are the most popular:
- "Don't pick up";
- Kaspersky Who Calls.
