How to Stop Those Annoying Robocalls

Your phone rings, the number on the screen starts with your local area code. Of course you’re going to pick up. What if it’s the school nurse calling about your children? What if it’s your dentist’s office calling to reschedule an appointment?

Then you pick up and a recording tells you that you’ve won a free cruise to Alaska or that you owe money to the IRS.

Yes, you’ve been hit by a robocall. These obnoxious recorded messages are used by companies to persuade you to buy something you usually don’t need. Not only are they annoying, but robocalls can be dangerous, too. Plenty of scammers use them to trick people into giving up their Social Security numbers, credit card digits, or other personal information. Worst of all? These robocalls are increasing, and so are complaints from consumers who have been harassed by those prerecorded pitches and scams.

Fortunately, there are steps you can take to stop at least a chunk of these calls and to protect yourself from any automated scams targeting your phone number.

We’re answering a LOT more robocalls lately

The Federal Trade Commission reported that in 2017, consumers filed more than 4.5 million complaints with the commission about robocalls. That ranks as the highest number of complaints in any year, and is a sharp increase from the more than 3.4 million robocall complaints consumers filed with the FTC in 2016.

The most common topic of these robocalls is debt reduction. Robocalls about vacations and timeshares were the second most common, while those about warranties and protection plans came in third.

How to stop them

If the number of robocalls bombarding your phone has increased, you’re not alone. How do you stop, or at least slow down, these intrusions?

Register your number on the Do Not Call list

Your first step is to sign up for the National Do Not Call Registry, offered by the FTC. Telemarketers are prohibited from using automated dialers to call cellphones or landlines on the list, unless the owners of these numbers give them consent first.

Unfortunately, listing your number on this list doesn’t stop all robocalls. That’s because many of the companies or scammers behind these calls won’t hesitate to ignore Federal Communications Commission regulations.