The other day, I was sitting comfortably in my living room with a cup of coffee in my hand when suddenly the phone rang. I glanced at the display: unknown number. “Probably just a friend I’ve forgotten,” I thought – and picked up. “Hello, this is…” – and before I could even find out who was on the other end, I was bombarded with some offer that I neither wanted nor needed. Another spam call. And it wasn’t the first one that week. Somehow, it seems as if these calls have gotten out of hand. As soon as you give out your number somewhere, the phone starts ringing: insurance companies, sweepstakes, ominous service offers. Sometimes it feels as if my phone has developed a life of its own.
Now, of course, many people would jump right in and say, “Yes, but who voluntarily gives out their phone number anywhere?” And in a way, they’re right. But the problem is, sometimes you have to – for example, when shopping online. A shipping company wants to call you to arrange a delivery date, and ignoring the call or wearing privacy glasses won’t help.
The logical alternative would be a burner number: you provide a temporary number, coordinate the delivery, and then delete it again. Great idea, but unfortunately, such a service doesn’t really exist in Germany—at least, I’m not aware of one. It may work in other countries, but here you have to rely on your own number. And that’s exactly where the spam calls start to creep in. Otherwise, I would use such a service immediately.
After the third call in a week, I’d had enough. I didn’t want to manually block random numbers anymore or constantly ignore my phone. After a bit of research, I came across PhoneBlock – a service that does exactly what I wanted: detect spam calls and block them automatically. The service can be set up on various devices, e.g., VoIP routers, FritzBox, Android, and iOS.
Since then, it’s as if someone has installed a “do not disturb” switch for my phone. No more annoying interruptions, no more suspicious offers. I can answer calls that are important to me again, and everything else is automatically intercepted.
So if you’ve had enough of unwanted calls, you should take a look at PhoneBlock.