Scam calls

[JJ818]

I  have had two scam calls two days in a row…both claiming to be from the fraud dept of my bank… When I asked which bank I use he couldn't tell me…then said he was phoning from the bank of England!  I have blocked both numbers… however… I have read about a scam call service for mobile users..can this not apply to my landline as well?  Sky have a feature called sky talk shield..a free service that forces callers to say who they are before they are connected…UNLESS you have added  number to your star list..could EE have a similar feature please? I’m getting sick of it…

[XRaySpeX]

@JJ818 : Are you receiving these calls on an EE landline? Is it on Digital Voice (DV)? If so, it does indicate some calls in its CLI as "Nuisance ?".

Report spam calls by filling the form @ https://www.bt.com/exp/help/contact-bt/form/scams

[JJ818]

Yes on my landline. Sick of it… btw your clink shows as   404 page cannot be found

[XRaySpeX]

@JJ818 : Sorry, I somehow truncated it. It should read:

Report spam calls by filling the form @ https://www.bt.com/exp/help/contact-bt/form/scams 

[JimM11]

@JJ818 The EE service help. What EE consider for call protect, the Sky Feature is not available, but you may have it depending also what your phone can do, worth a check on that.

How to avoid and prevent spam | Security Help | EE

Call Protect | Home Phone Help | EE

[edbostan]

I believe EE/BT have Call Guardian where you have to identify yourself for the call to be put through

[JimM11]

@edbostan More off a useful handset feature if i remember correctly.

[YorkshireMidge]

Dunno anything about the Sky offering, but a challenge to 100% of callers not on a whitelist is without doubt the most effective method by far IMO.   I think the EE Call Protect just attempts to identify them. 

We've been completely free of scammers and telemarketing companies for well over a decade.  In our case, we have the original TrueCall unit (one of Peter Jones's investments in Dragons Den c2009) which sits between phone line and (in our case) a cordless phone base station.  If you phone our number, the TrueCall silently answers for us and you get a message telling you our line is TPS registered and we don't tolerate telemarketting and scam callers.  You then have to hit the required breakthrough key (which deals with automated message callers as they don't know what button they are being asked to press). You then have to say your name - and the TrueCall then rings us up and relays it, giving us the option to take the call or dump it/blacklist it without ever talking to the caller.   TrueCall claim 95% effective, but it has been 100% effective for us because we find telemarketers and scammers just hang up at the first step because they know they won't get anywhere. 

Some years back, BT then licensed the TrueCall technology and incorporated it into some of their phone ranges - such as the  BT8600 Advanced Call Blocker, and BT Decor 2600 Advanced Call Blocker. The only difference from memory is the BT phones are slightly less configurable but still highly effective - and we have a Decor 2600 at my mother-in-laws to keep scammers away from her. 

The elephant in the corner of the room is if/when BT might incorporate the principles of TrueCall into Digital Voice, knowing that it will undermine sales of some of their phone products. TrueCall's IPR might also be a factor + it will impact sales of the TrueCall standalone unit which you can still buy, eventhough its knocking on a bit now. 

But before you rush out to buy any products with TrueCall technology in it, there does seem to be a problem currently when used with the EE hub and that is detailed in the thread below.  In summary, my workaround whilst this is acknowledged and fixed is to use a BT SmartHub 2 in place of the EE hub, as the BT branded hub doesn't have the issue. 

https://community.ee.co.uk/t5/Digital-Home-Phone/Call-screening-landline-phone-not-working-on-Digita...