Telemarketing is probably the most source of con artists or scams for any family. Questionable marketers may call you at any time of the day to offer investment schemes or sweepstakes plans. Then they pressure you to sign up immediately because the offer is only good for a limited period. Often, they’ll demand some kind of up-front investment or fee to participate, which is always a red flag that the caller is not on the up-and-up.
Be forewarned: Don’t give out any personal information or credit card numbers to a person who calls you on the phone like this. Don’t buy anything from anyone over the phone. Some older people in particular seem to have a harder time hanging up on obnoxious salespeople. This may be because they don’t want to be rude. If this is the case with you, get a phone equipped with Caller ID so that you can simply not pick up when you don’t the number of the caller.
Also, make sure your phone number has spam call blocking app or is registered with the national Do Not Call registry. This should significantly cut down — if not eliminate — the number of telemarketers calling your home.
For a particular problem in the telecom industry to affect an acronym, it must be important, and it is. It’s SMS spam. Mobile phones have traditionally been less bothered by this type of marketing, but it is catching up in use and popularity. The lowered costs of text messaging make mobile phones a nice target for spammers. This is believed to be enough of a trend that GMSA is working to provide an environment where it cannot be replicated in the mobile world the way it has run rampant in the computer world. For mobile phone marketers and users, this is an important development. Since about 90% of all email is spam, an effort to avoid the same waste of time and money on mobile phones is important.
In years past, one thing that stopped the widespread use of SMS spam was the cost of text messaging. It was an expensive proposition for the spammer to use, and when they could use email spam for free, it seemed to make little sense. Now with lower-cost text messaging plans, and mobile internet access, it will start to grow. Spammers are well aware of how popular mobile internet access has become, and are on the move to take advantage.
If you have kids, it’s also very important to educate them not to answer the phone unless they specifically know who is calling. This protects them not only from phone solicitors but from all manner of dangerous characters.
Going beyond this basic form of not answering the phone, there are steps you and your family can take to protect yourselves. Many phone companies offer a call screening service, which means they do not automatically let callers ring your phone until you specifically accept calls from their phone number. This works well, especially for people who usually get calls from the same set of people.
For the consumer who wants more control, app to stop spam calls are becoming available to block not only SMS spam but spam calls too. These apps can be worthwhile but do come with some drawbacks. Many will not allow the phone to accept calls or messages from numbers not stored in the phone, and the user has to compile a list of spam-type words. And for users who are not tech-minded, the installation of the apps can be complicated. There is no one-step solution for consumers or carriers to date, and one can expect that SMS spam will get worse before it gets better.
One final step a family can take is to utilize an online telemarketer identification and blocking site like Phone Spam Filter or Telemarketer Catcher. These sites allow you to look up a phone number to see if others have complained about it in the past. Also, there are tools online for automatically blocking inbound calls based on whether they show up in a database if you have the technical inclination to figure that out.
