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Spam Numbers - Unwanted Calls

Livvybabyxo
Good Citizen / Bon Citoyen

I recieved a call from a spammer who had stolen the number from the National Guard. The national guard is quite aware someone is using their phone number for fraudulent purposes. They did request that in the event I continue to receive spam calls, I should contact my phone company. Other than blocking the numbers, which seem to come from different sources - is there any other options for reporting and blocking spam within PM? 

16 REPLIES 16

Obice
Model Citizen / Citoyen Modèle

@diyaa 

 

We live in a broken system. I seriously doubt calling one call center (Canada's fraud prevention) to report an opposing/other call center/spammer is going to do much. You get rid of one and some more appear.

 

"...Frustrating
Throw sticks into the spokes
To relieve insecurities
..." - Silenced, Mudvayne (While this song has to do with censorship this specific lyric applies to reassurance in general)

diyaa
Good Citizen / Bon Citoyen

Hello there,

 

I have seen received many of these calls and what I did is blocking the caller and call the Canadian Anti Fraud Center since I live in Canada, and I think that it is the duty of every single citizen to report that to the authorities ,no matter where they live. and not just that I also went to the website the caller guided me to. He said that it is to get emergency aid due to the Covid-19 event. and looked up the DNS record of his website, then I took his phone number and called him to tell him how stupid he is, after that I gave his phone number to the Canadian Anti Fraud Center, and that was the last day he saw the sun 😂. by the way I am a high school student and this came out of me. so please be an effective and responsible citizen by doing the right thing to protect you and protect others.

https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/services/protect-fraud/report-fraud.html

best regards,

 

Diyaa

Hmmm... The "solution" to this topic is set to one that says it can't be done, even though later posts show two ways that it CAN be done:

 

  1. Extended absence greeting within voicemail with option to leave a message disabled.
  2. Set all conditional call forwards not to go to voicemail. (ie. by dialing *004*808000000#)

Livvybabyxo
Good Citizen / Bon Citoyen

Thank you 

Livvybabyxo
Good Citizen / Bon Citoyen

Brilliant! Love it! 

Obice
Model Citizen / Citoyen Modèle

@Nezgar wrote:

@Obice wrote:

I appreciate your suggestion and effort but an even better solution would be the ability to disable voicemail (which they swear they cannot)


A process for disabling voicemail has been fully tested and documented by the community:

 

https://productioncommunity.publicmobile.ca/t5/Getting-Started/Re-Disable-Voicemail/m-p/213805/highl...


I have read about this in the FAQ and to me it is not a direct way to disable voicemail. One still needs to record a message for this to work and I do not wish to do that, if I'm alone I'm not surprised at all.

 

A customer should be able to contact their provider, as I have done at least once in the past, ask that their voicemail be disabled and the company does it even if they have to ask why, they should still be able to and that's that. There is no logical problem I see where disabling voiecmail should be "impossible" other than they simply do not want to do it for you.

 

I understand that an employee you chat with or talk to might not have the authority to do this (stupid to me, but okay) but they should still be able to request this to someone higher up... Unless, of course, they don't want to or the company has it in their policy not to let it happen.


@Obice wrote:

I appreciate your suggestion and effort but an even better solution would be the ability to disable voicemail (which they swear they cannot)


A process for disabling voicemail has been fully tested and documented by the community:

 

https://productioncommunity.publicmobile.ca/t5/Getting-Started/Re-Disable-Voicemail/m-p/213805/highl...

Obice
Model Citizen / Citoyen Modèle

@Nezgar wrote:

@Obice wrote:

Nope, the most you can do is not answer and block the number from within your phone.


Keep in mind that not answering, or blocking the number will direct the call to your voicemail, where it can further annoy you by having to go and delete whatever message they leave.

 

To prevent those calls from reaching your voicemail, change your "Busy" or "Declined" conditional call forwarding setting in the forwarding settings in the phone app settings menus, or manually by dialing the *67 code, such as the examples below:

  • Dial *67*18080000000# - an invalid USA number - caller will get either endless ringing, or a fast busy if call is declined or blocked.
  • Dial *67*13065458171# - plays message "At the customers request, the number you have dialed is configured for outgoing calls only."

Unanswered calls, and calls while the phone is off the network will continue to go to voicemail as usual. Numbers you decline or are in the android reject list do not.

 

To reset back to public mobile default voicemail, dial ##67#


I appreciate your suggestion and effort but an even better solution would be the ability to disable voicemail (which they swear they cannot) and/or do something about the spam calls (which is getting into the political side of things, so it's probably more scr*wed up than the prior thought about voicemail).


@Obice wrote:

Nope, the most you can do is not answer and block the number from within your phone.


Keep in mind that not answering, or blocking the number will direct the call to your voicemail, where it can further annoy you by having to go and delete whatever message they leave.

 

To prevent those calls from reaching your voicemail, change your "Busy" or "Declined" conditional call forwarding setting in the forwarding settings in the phone app settings menus, or manually by dialing the *67 code, such as the examples below:

  • Dial *67*18080000000# - an invalid USA number - caller will get either endless ringing, or a fast busy if call is declined or blocked.
  • Dial *67*13065458171# - plays message "At the customers request, the number you have dialed is configured for outgoing calls only."

Unanswered calls, and calls while the phone is off the network will continue to go to voicemail as usual. Numbers you decline or are in the android reject list do not.

 

To reset back to public mobile default voicemail, dial ##67#

Obice
Model Citizen / Citoyen Modèle

Nope, the most you can do is not answer and block the number from within your phone.

 

You shan't receive help from Public Mobile other than the advise above. I have tried. Apparently removing spam is not as important as charging us a ton of money to get all the spam. Smiley Happy

Autodialers with recorded computer babble ("Please select which flavour of spam you prefer from the menu..."). No way to block them. You can politely (but firmly) request they de-list your number and never call it again, and sometimes - sometimes - they politely accede. You can rudely demand instead, but usually won't get productive results unless you can (and will) follow up with official complaints to your carrier and the CCTS.

 

 

Otherwise your only options are to register on the Canadian and USA Do Not Call Lists (which are somewhat helpful and somewhat useless, because they only prohibit legit and compliant spammers) or to get in the habit of not answering unknown callers. If important then they'll leave a message, if you never return calls then they'll eventually give up.

 

It would be nice if PM could implement some sort of network-side Blocked Incoming Number option in Self-Serve or Voicemail user options, with or without playing back any (polite or rude) automatic/recorded messages to the unwanted callers.

 

It's become evident that Telus hasn't yet implemented a working UNCB filter to shutdown spoofed or blacklisted calls. Autospam is a growing problem which needs to be addressed with better user controls than ineffective device-side software blocking.


@mpcdesign wrote:

I hate telemarketers, and I sometimes answer the phone stating that am a business, or the same company as themselves. I even said there was nobody by that name. Either way, they stop calling me for and they try and repeat the process after 6 months. 


The thing is, most of the spam calls lately aren't even fun anymore. They're just recordings that prompt you to press or say something so the spammers don't have to be bothered with  numbers without real humans on the other end...

mpcdesign
Mayor / Maire

@Livvybabyxo, you know, if the National Guard calls again, answer the phone and say, "Hi, the National Guard, how can I help you," they be so confused and take you off the list.

 

I hate telemarketers, and I sometimes answer the phone stating that am a business, or the same company as themselves. I even said there was nobody by that name. Either way, they stop calling me for and they try and repeat the process after 6 months. 

Nezgar
Mayor / Maire

I know from first hand experience with corporate VoIP telephone systems, (And even older PRI based systems) that forging the outgoing caller ID is extremely trivial... We've used it for comic effect at work...

 

So reporting those numbers is a waste of time. Your best initial step is to simply decline calls you do not recognize by diverting the decline/busy conditional call forwarding setting as I described in a response to another topic you posted recently, and if it persists, add it to your phones reject list.

https://productioncommunity.publicmobile.ca/t5/Discussions/Blocked-Callers-Able-to-leave-voicemail/m...

 

After doing this, you can hope your number might be marked in the callers database as a 'disconnected' number since it did not result in a call being answered by you, or a voicemail system and be ignored in the future.

 

At a minimum, it's nice to know that those calls won't further annoy you with a voicemail you also have to delete.

Dunkman
Oracle
Oracle

@Livvybabyxo 

At the present time, there is nothing directly from Public mobile that can block spammers.  Just continue to block the numbers from your phone.  

 

Other option is to change numbers, which may or may not lead to fewer spam callers.  

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