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FEWER SCAM CALLS. PERIOD

FEWER SCAM CALLS. PERIOD
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H
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Free version worked great for about 6 months. Now, it is blocking calls from my contact list it previously allowed thru, and not blocking spam calls like it did before. If I want to mark a call to block, I have to pay, no thank you. Have to uninstall now. Thanks T-mo for a useless “free” service.

 

Spammers can get pretty crafty about how they are making calls and this means that the technology used to block those calls may not always know exactly what to look for. That is why it is important to find those calls that sneak through on the call logs in the Scam Shield app and report them. Reports sent from customers is how we learn and adapt.

You probably already did, but it is good to keep an eye on your block list in the app and on your device to ensure that numbers you know aren’t on there for some reason. Spoofing is a common tactic used by scammers nowadays so it is also possible that numbers are being reported spam when they aren’t. You can use the Scam Shield app to mark those calls as not spam so they are not blocked in the future. Something could have happened that removed the allow tag. Are you still seeing the contact marked as allowed or favorited when it is blocked? Did you check for updates on the Scam Shield app and your device software? Out of date software on the phone or app can cause inconsistencies in performance. When any of the weirdness is happening are you getting any error messages in the app or your notification bar, or are you just noticing that calls are not coming through or getting blocked incorrectly?

Having the ability to block the caller and report things as spam all is one place is pretty great, but I understand not wanting to pay for those kinds of services. You should still have the option to block callers in your calling settings. Most of the time you can go to the call in your phone’s call log and select the info icon next to it. If you block the number, you avoid future calls and if you report the number in the Scam Shield app, we can use that information to make the feature even better. 

Thanks for sharing a bit more information so we can try to figure out why that app is not working for you. 

M

I hope someone monitors this, since the last entry is a year ago!

I have been getting text messages that are scams for 3-4 years now. It is due to identity theft, but they changed their game lately. They used to send emails and texts saying things like “hey look at this, I can’t believe this happened to us! “, with a url to follow. They always address it to my son’s name, including emails they would send to others, usually family, but a few ppl from my contacts. 
For the last year or so, I’ve been getting texts addressed to my son, saying things like “we value your opinion, come and get a token of our gratitude “, with Google URL’s to follow. I report it to EVERYONE* applicable, but the problem is it comes from a new number each time. Always the same format, but different phone numbers. I block every number, but as long as scammers can spoof numbers (and we can’t!), what can I do short of changing my number. Believe me, I thought of that too.

Is there a way to block a text based on content?

*Places I report spam text to: reportphishing@apwg, reportphishing@apple.com (for apple users) reportphishing@tmobile.com, and SPAM (7726) for any carrier. If  it supposedly comes from a company I know wants to be notified of these types of texts, I send it to them too. UPS, Amazon, Apple, are big ones. I have a bunch others, that if I get a lot of texts about, I’ll call them and find out if they want to have a copy sent to them. After that, I report junk and delete. That’s after I take a screenshot and go to the phone number to block it. 

I know it seems excessive, but when you’ve had your identity stolen, I just don’t take chances. My name and information has appeared in so many data breaches, that it just seems overwhelming. Ones I predicted years ago, and deleted my email, passwords were changed and I left the company are just now telling us that our information was compromised in a data breach. I told them over and over they had problems, but nobody wanted to listen. 

Any ideas are appreciated!

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