Who can’t relate to the annoying interruption that is The Robocall. Many will agree that over the past year or so, they have gotten completely out of hand. They are more frequent and harder to block.
First, they started getting harder to spot. It used to be that you always knew when a sales call was coming because it cam from a 1-800 number. But these days that’s not the case. Not only do Robocalls simply show up as out-of-are calls (And let’s admit it, in this day and age where it’s so easy to stay connected with people, it’s not uncommon to receive an out-of area call that’s NOT a junk call, so it can be hard to decipher which calls are legitimate and which are sales and scams.), but now thanks to spoofing technology, they show up as in-area calls that look local, or sometimes they can even be made to look like they are coming from numbers in your contacts – or from your own phone number!
Not only are the harder to spot, but they are occurring more frequently, often multiple times in one day. And they’ve become hard to block as well. Companies can easily buy huge batches of phone numbers to call from, so just because you block one number they’ve used to call you doesn’t mean that you’ve blocked any of the other numbers that same company uses.
It’s become such a hassle that it’s no wonder people are going to all kinds of great lengths to try and block them. Sure some phones try and make it easier, like the fact that Google phones will usually identify suspected spam calls, and many Google phones now have an option to let you screen calls if it’s coming from a number you don’t know, but even then, it’s a lot of time and energy put into the problem that we wish we didn’t have to spend.
Lots of people have recently turned to using apps that will block robocalls. It seems like the prefect solution- just download the app and then let it do all the work for you. But there may be a catch! According to Tom’s Guide, apps by TrapCall, Hiya and Truecaller have all ben said to violate privacy guidelines. Considering the fact that these apps will have access to your phone number, your contacts, and even your text messages and voicemails, the idea that they could be leaking this information to third parties is downright scary!
Read the full article from Tom’s Guide here: https://www.tomsguide.com/news/these-robocall-blocking-apps-may-be-secretly-selling-your-data