Telemarketers and spam callers can reach you not only on your smartphone but also on a landline. Some people may even get so many silent calls, robocalls, or scam messages on their home phone that they choose to disconnect their landline service altogether.
However, there is no need to take such extreme measures. So how do you block a phone number on a landline home phone?
How To Block Unwanted Calls on a Landline Phone
It’s almost impossible to block all of the spam calls on your home phone. But luckily, there are a few technological solutions that can help you minimize the chance of getting such calls. And even though you won’t get the same result you do when blocking nuisance calls on iOS or Android smartphones, it’s worth trying.
Whether you have a home phone that uses the internet (VoIP) or a traditional landline, there are actions that you can take to stop unwanted calls.
1. Contact Your Landline Service Provider
Most of the major home phone providers can assist you in the battle against nuisance calls. Usually, they offer a free or paid-for service to help deal with this issue. The solutions that they have for their customers differ between each provider.
For example, if you live in the UK and use the BT landline services, then you should try out the Call Protect feature. It is free to use for all BT clients. It will protect you from spammers by automatically sending their calls directly to voicemail.
The company has its own database of nuisance callers; therefore, when someone calls you from an unknown number, they will run it through that list of callers to check whether it should be sent to the junk voicemail.
2. Get a Call-Blocking Device
If you have a copper phone line, this is the tool that you should go with to block robocalls, spam calls, or any other type of nuisance calls. There are many different call blocking devices on the market. Usually, they come preloaded with spam phone numbers.
Here’s the problem—scammers tend to change their phone numbers frequently, which means that there is a high possibility of the newest scam numbers not being on your device’s list.
However, there also are some call-blocking devices that allow you to manually enter a phone number that you wish to block. But since scammers like to spoof legitimate phone numbers, for example, bank phone numbers or tech support, you should be careful when blocking them.
3. Manually Block Unwanted Numbers on Your Home Phone
Many modern home phones have built-in call blocking technology. It can be used to block specific phone numbers. Therefore you’ll be able to block a spam caller only after the call has been made, which leaves you quite limited in your options.
There are also some landline phone models that come with more sophisticated features for actually preventing nuisance calls.
For example, you may have the possibility to block phone numbers from a specific range—for instance, all numbers that have the 473 area code. Or you’ll be able to block different types of phone numbers, like all international ones.
And if your home phone blocked an unknown caller, which actually was just a friend calling from a borrowed phone, the message will be transferred to the answering machine. So real people will still be able to reach you.
Other Ways To Prevent Annoying Phone Calls
There are some other methods that you can try to stop getting nuisance phone calls on your home phone. But they won’t work for all types of calls and are somewhat more complex than the ones mentioned above.
Here’s what else you can try:
- Set up an interactive voice response system. This will be effective only with VoIP home phones and precisely for robocalls. Even though it is a foolproof way to stop robocalls on your device, it will take up to two hours to set it up, and the process of doing it is quite complex.
- Use a third-party service. A good example of such a service is Nomorobo. It aims to reduce robocalls and telemarketing calls to your landline phone. But this service only works with VoIP carriers, so if you have a copper-based phone line, it’s not an option in your case.
How To Report Unwanted Calls
You can assist in tracking down scammers by reporting them to the right agencies.
They release the reported phone numbers to the public and therefore help service providers with their call-blocking solutions.
Here’s where you should report nuisance calls to depending on what country you’re located in:
- The USA: Federal Trade Commission. You should report to this government agency whenever you get a robocall or a spam call. Also, if you often receive annoying telemarketing calls, you can add your phone number to the National Do Not Call Registry to stop getting sales calls from legitimate companies.
- Canada: Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre. If you receive a suspicious call that might be a part of some fraud scheme, you should report it to this agency. You can also add your landline phone number to the National DNCL to stop receiving unsolicited calls from telemarketers.
- The UK: National Fraud & Cyber Crime Reporting Centre. This agency is also known as Action Fraud. If you get a suspicious call and think that it might be a scam scheme, you should report it to this agency.
Protect Your Home Phone From Scammers
Even though it is practically impossible to completely block all spam callers on your landline, you still can take certain actions to minimize the number of unwanted calls—ask your service provider for a solution, get a call-blocking device, or manually block any annoying calls.
Remember to always be careful about who you talk to on the phone and don’t give out personal information to strangers. There are various phone scams that can be hard to figure out whether it’s a scammer calling you or not, such as the fake ISP phone call scam or the Windows tech support scam.
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