New free app that lets you block and report nuisance calls for good
Register your number on the UK's official no-call list and get ratings on incoming calls to judge whether you can trust them
BRITS can easily block and report nuisance calls from scammers, sales teams and advertisers with a new app.
Hundreds of thousands of nuisance calls are officially recorded ever year - but many more don't ever get reported.
Many Brits don't know that you can officially register your mobile number as well as your landline onto the Telephone Preference Service - a list of people who don't want to receive marketing calls.
The TPS Protect app goes even further, by allowing the user to easily send off a report about the scam caller from your phone itself.
It also allows you to search numbers on its database and rate incoming calls to judge whether you can trust them before you pick up.
For every call that comes in, the app rates it from one to five - and you can choose which levels of calls you want to receive.
And every call that is blocked or reported helps determine the trust score for that number in future.
The app is free to download but you'll have to pay 99p after the first 60 days to unlock additional features, such as the ability to automatically divert nuisance calls to voicemail or set up a personalised block and approved list.
And then you can also block calls by sector, such as accident claims, or allow ones from companies you'd like to hear from such as charities.
John Mitchison, Head of TPS at the DMA, said: "When scam calls get reported, their trust score drops. So your voice matters.”
How you can block nuisance calls
1. Register your phone with the Telephone Preference Service (TPS), which adds your number to a list that don’t want to receive sales and marketing calls
2. Buy a call-blocking product from your phone provider or install one yourself
3. To stop nuisance texts, forward it to 7726 – this spells “SPAM” on your phone keypad. This will report the sender to your mobile network company
4. Always make sure you report the calls to the Telephone Preference Service or the Information Commissioners’ Office so the company can hopefully be fined.
Last year just 22 penalties were issued to firms who repeatedly targeted people with cold calling and texts in 2016.
And only four paid them – the rest dodged the fines by shutting down the firms and opening new ones.
Keurboom Communications were recently fined £400,000 for making 100 MILLION calls to irritated customers.
From January to December 2016, the ICO recorded a whopping 134,828 calls in total – 70,000 of which were automated messages.
BT has a similar service which blocks the calls before their reach your phone.
It works by using live data to identify rogue numbers and blacklists them - and customers can also add numbers to their own barred list.
But that's only for landlines.