T-Mobile's fight against robocalls just got real
You know what feels better than hanging up on a robocall? Never getting the call in the first place.
Starting April 5, T-Mobile ONE customers will have the opportunity to enable a new feature that the company claims can prevent spam calls before they ever reach a phone.
It's a one-two punch called Scam Block and Scam ID, which T-Mobile claims will eventually be available to everyone on its network. Here's how it works on the consumer end: If enabled, Scam ID will alert customers that an incoming call is likely some sort of scam. The person can either then choose to answer the phone or decline the call. If Scam Block is turned on, the call will never even go through to the customer's phone.
No ring, no nothing.
Things are a little more complicated on the carrier side.
"[Every] time someone calls a T-Mobile customer, as soon as that call reaches the T-Mobile network, patent-pending technology analyzes it – in milliseconds – against an advanced global database of tens of thousands of known scammer numbers," a T-Mobile press release reads. "The database is kept up-to-date in near real-time by analyzing every call that comes into the network with behavioral heuristics and intelligent scam pattern detection."
If a match is found — poof — the call is terminated.
Pretty neat, right?
Automated robocalls are a big problem. According to the FCC, consumers last year received 2.4 billion robocalls per month. That's a lot of wasted time, and, of course, money.
"Fraudsters bombard consumers’ phones at all hours of the day with spoofed robocalls," reads a FCC fact sheet on combating robocalls, "which in some cases lure consumers into scams (e.g., when a caller claims to be collecting money owed to the Internal Revenue Service) or lead to identity theft."
Even crazier, the LA Times hips us to robocalls that trick consumers into saying the word "yes." That's it. However, fraudsters can then use that audio clip to authorize bogus charges or sign you up for unwanted services. How do the automated calls accomplish this? By pretending to be a real person and asking if you can hear them.
Fingers crossed this new T-Mobile service will have some success in at least slowing down the deluge of robocalls hitting unsuspecting people around the country. Realistically, however, we know that no solution is a panacea and imagine that scammers will eventually find a way around Scam Block. Even so, it's a start.
As an added bit of protection, allow us here at Mashable to present our own bit of common sense phone-security advice: Don't answer calls from numbers you don't recognize. If the caller doesn't leave a message, well, then could it have really been that important in the first place? As for giving out personal information over the phone? Just don't.
Topics FCC
