Team Partners Telecommunications

How to avoid scams and unwanted calls

Posted on Oct 21, 2024  | Tags: security, phone systems, mobiles

One of the things that make people bristle is the whole subject of the ‘nanny state’ and how, it’s said, Government is constantly looking over our shoulders and trying to protect us from ourselves. Instantly we think of those areas of life where being subject to living in a ‘nanny state’ has most impacted our own particular way of life, be it smoking, driving or the amount of sugar we consume, and once our minds start down this passage of thought we can get quite worked up as to the many ways in which the State, any State, controls our way of life…

But perhaps there’s a difference between one expression of ‘nannyism’ and another. Even in that short list we gave above, the difference being between sugar consumption and smoking, on the one hand, and driving on the other is worth thinking about. In the case of driving and driving at speed, legislation protects us from ourselves, but with sugar consumption and smoking it’s different, legislation in these cases is protecting us from businesses, specifically those who would be happy to see us smoke and eat ourselves to death.

The sad truth is that we, the public, need help to protect ourselves from the excesses of those businesses who put their interests ahead of ours, altruistic though they may pretend or think themselves to be. All of which brings us to this month’s topic and the subject of spam, scams and unwanted calls generally…all of which are made by those more interested in their own ends than yours!

Acknowledging the problem that we’re often not sure who it is that’s calling us and why, O2 is introducing a couple of new services, Brand ID and Call Defence. The idea of Brand ID is that when a company calls your mobile their name will show up on your screen, giving you the option on how you proceed. Similarly, Call Defence checks incoming call numbers to let you know it it’s potentially a scam or spam, which again gives you the option of answering or not. It may be worth mentioning that O2 isn’t guaranteeing that all calls will be monitored by these new services, but it’s a start.

There are, of course, other steps one can take to secure peace of mind and ear. You can register your number with the Telephone Preference Service (Text TPS with your email address to 85095), doing so will reduce the number of unasked for sales and marketing calls you’ll receive and, if you miss a call from a number you don’t know, and try and ring back only to get charged for it, you can report these to nuisance@telefonica.com, who’ll do something about it.

Similarly, spam texts can be forwarded to O2 on 7726 and, if appropriate, they’ll forward the details to the Information Commissioner’s Office and maybe to Action Fraud.

O2 is not alone in offering these types of services. If your business uses live calls or texts to find customers you may also find it helpful to register with the organisations below that are offering these services to protect your brand and customers.

Hiya
First Orion
TNS

Or give Team Partners Telecommunications a ring and we can guide you!