National Do Not Call Registry

Mango · August 12

My DW has been receiving an ever increasing amount of spam calls on her cell phone lately. She is currently stage 4 and I while I don't want to discourage her from using the phone, I want to make sure that she is safe. While looking for solutions, I came across the National Do Not Call Registry (donotcall.gov)

Not sure if it will help, but I thought I'd give it a try and pass it along. Anyone have any luck with this?

notequipped · August 12

I used that ages ago. I have Verizon. Call filter is free to activate with them. I rarely get unwanted calls. Unfortunately, unwanted texts are a different story.

lizfourgod · August 12

https://alzconnected.org/discussion/76809/national-do-not-call-registry

made a difference but was not instantaneous took months

SusanB-dil · August 12

I've also utilized it. Thank you for the post. A lot of folks not aware of it.

Edit to add: i just checked mine (you can go to the website and verify), and it was not on the list. Oh, my! It is, now!! My old phone # was.

Damiross · August 12

Law abiding companies don't call, Spammers are going to call because they don't care about the law.. Sadly, when they enacted the law they exempted political groups and some other groups.

I checked the registry. My wife's phone was registered in 2008; mine in 2003.

I do get a notice on my phone's screen if a call might be a spam or telemarketer. However, ,it is not 100% cruel. Quite often it'll show just a regular number and sometimes even say it's a valid number. Unfortunately, due to the condition of my wife, I need to answer phone if it doesn't say spam or telemarketer just in case it is about my wife.

What I like to do if I have the time is to mess with spammers. I go along with what they're saying. After a few minutes, I tell the caller that their naked mother or father or whatever wants me. For some reason, when I say that they always hang up.

I figure if I can keep them on the phone for 3 or 4 minutes, that's possibly one less person they are able to call.

dancsfo · August 12

Some mobile providers provide spam filtering options, and some landline providers do.

PWD's landline provider uses nomorobo to block suspected spammers so it won't ring the phone and also choosing to not answer, make it say "line is disconnected", say it is blocked or go to voicemail.

You can get the service independently on a mobile phone if your provider does not have a filtering option, and it can block spam texts. As @Damiross states, legit companies will abide with the registry, but the ones not within reach of the law (outside the country) will flaunt it. Removing your number from data brokers can help, but it is either very burdensome, or costly if you purchase a service to do it for you.

Fraud inflicted on the elderly (and PWD) is a major problem. At some point, you may need to either take away the phone, or perhaps set it to only accept calls from known numbers. iPhones have a special assistive access mode for those with cognitive disabilities, which can help at early stages and Android has some similiar 3rd party apps.

Mango · August 12

https://alzconnected.org/discussion/comment/279713#Comment_279713

@dancsfo Thanks for the suggestions and link. It gives me a couple more steps to investigate if things don't improve.

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