Monday, July 3, 2017

How to block those dang "stay at our resort" spam calls

The problem

In the last couple months or so, I have been receiving spam calls from an automated caller that claims that I have stayed at one of their resorts. The recording is made to sound like a live person, but you cannot interrupt the caller no matter how loudly you yell for them to stop. They annoyingly call my cell phone at least once per week. The incoming call comes from a spoofed semi-random number.
At first, it seemed that it would be difficult to block the calls given that it is from a random number. However, their is a pattern to the number. The spoofed number always shares the first 6 digits of my cell number. The last four digits are the ones that are randomized. The purpose of this is to make it look like it is a "local" call.

The Solution

After doing a bit of research, I settled on an app called "Should I Answer?". This app has a nice wild card feature for blocking ranges of phone numbers. So, the trick is to install the app, and then add a "private rating" for a phone number that is the first 6 digits of your phone number plus a "*". This will block these phony numbers. If there is a number that is in this range that you do want to receive calls from, just add it to your contacts.

This solution is working great for me and I thought it was well worth sharing.