HOW TO STOP UNWANTED CALLS
ON A LANDLINE

How to Stop Unwanted Calls on a Landline Phone

If you find yourself wondering how to stop unwanted calls on a landline you are not alone. Unwanted calls placed to landline phones continue to go nowhere but up. In fact, US landline households are experiencing an average of 940 million calls a week from spam, scam, and other unwanted calls. These calls tend to be everything from selling you a car warranty to rescuing a “relative in trouble.” And these calls are not only irritants, the motive behind them is dangerous. Scammers are relentlessly trying to get unknowing consumers to hand over enough information so the scammer can use it to steal money. And they are succeeding.

POPULAR TYPES OF LANDLINE SCAM CALLS

There are a variety of landline call scams that take place on a regular basis. All of them are successfully stealing from innocent consumers.

Imposter Landline Call Scams - A scammer may pretend to be someone you trust, like a government agency or a family member. They can also come across as someone convincingly calling to tell you there is something wrong with your computer, otherwise known as a tech scam. These bad characters will often ask for you to pay by wiring money, or using a gift card - any form of payment that is hard to reverse.

Debt Relief and Credit Repair Landline Call Scams - You may get a call from a scammer offering to lower your credit card rate or get student loans forgiven IF you pay their company a fee. 

Charity Landline Call scams - Scammers may pose as charities requesting donations, especially for disaster relief efforts.

Extended Car Warranties Landline Call Scams - These are so common they have become the cornerstone for so many jokes. Sometimes the scammer will find out what car you drive but mostly, they just guess. As long as they can get you to engage they will urge you to buy overpriced or fake warranty contracts.

Prize and Lottery Landline Call Scams - The scammer may say you’ve won some type of lottery or prize, but in order to receive the money, you need to pay taxes, registration fees, or shipping charges.


THESE LANDLINE SCAMS ARE NO JOKE

According to AARP, a 69- year old woman from CA was told by a “friend” on Facebook that she needed to send money regarding a grant - and she handed over $65,000! An 85- year old got a call from someone claiming to be a federal agent regarding her SS number. She ultimately sent $8,000 to the scammer. A 79-year-old Florida man was contacted by a fake FBI agent who said he had won a $1.9 million sweepstakes, but the money was being held until he could pay fees and taxes. He eventually sent $100,000 to the person who was actually a scammer.

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BUT HOW CAN WE STOP THESE UNWANTED CALLS ON LANDLINES?

Spam calls have been plaguing landline phones since the 1970’s. Without Caller ID, people had no choice other than to answer the call and hope it was from someone they knew. Through the years, different ways to block and stop these calls have been developed - but do these internet recommendations actually work?


Blocking unwanted calls on a Landline by signing up for the Do Not Call Registry


Very often, a consumer's first line of defense in stopping unwanted calls is to sign up for the Do Not Call Registry. This national registry is monitored by the Federal Trade Commision. It was originally designed to stop unwanted sales calls and telemarketing calls. 

With over 200 million numbers registered, it is clearly a method tried by many concerned consumers. Unfortunately, this solution is, well, not actually a solution. 

As the FTC explains that their system is designed to stop sales calls from legitimate companies only. This is great as far as cutting back on telemarketers but only if they are compliant. Scammers are not paying attention to the FTC and are very successful at getting through to any landline number.

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Blocking unwanted calls on a landline using a traditional call blocker.

Another popular method in trying to block unwanted calls is by utilizing a traditional landline call blocker. While there are a few big names to choose from, the reality is that the technology behind this solution does not actually stop the unwanted numbers from getting through. 

In fact, according to imp’s Landline Landscape Report, 83% of landline phone owners are actively bothered by unwanted calls yet traditional call blockers are only stopping 5%.  

Not are traditional landline call blockers a failed solution, they end up only adding to the frustration. With traditional call blockers, you will only be able to block known spam numbers. And with neighbor spoofing, these numbers change so quickly there is no way to keep up with them.

BLOCKING UNWANTED CALLS ON YOUR LANDLINE USING YOUR SERVICE PROVIDER'S OPTION.

While this may block a few specific numbers, there are some challenges. You actually need to know what the number is in order to block it. This is fine if you actually know the number.

Unfortunately, most spammers change their numbers frequently and it is very likely you may exceed the phone number limitation pretty quickly. This method also requires you to save the number you want to block and manually enter it individually. This is time consuming and mistakes can easily happen resulting in incorrect numbers being blocked.

With imp’s Greenlist Technology, you do not have to worry about deciding and entering numbers to block. The focus is on the calls you do want - you know these numbers. They are in your smartphone contacts and will easily sync over to imp.

Now when these numbers call, they will all ring through. No need to block anything.

the imp system a landline call blocker that works

WHY IMP WILL BE THE LAST CALL BLOCKING SOLUTION YOU WILL NEED TO TRY.

The imp system has the power to stop all unwanted phone numbers –100% of the time. imp accomplishes total home silence by going about the “blocking” process in an entirely different way than traditional call blocker devices, Do Not Call Registry and selective number blocking.  

At its core, the imp system focuses completely on the calls you want. This means that your phone never rings from a spam call. So you never have to worry about those unwanted calls again. 

How does this work? Using our Greenlist Technology, imp syncs your smartphone contacts to your imp box – the custom landline hardware which really becomes your landline brains. Now that all your trusted contacts are in the imp system, those are the only callers that will ring through.  

The result is that you no longer need to know or worry about the actual phone numbers of any unwanted callers. You can focus solely on the callers you actually want to ring through. And imp will update this contact list in real time. So if you add someone to your contact list or dial out a new number from your landline, imp is smart enough to know you want to be in touch with this contact. And with the app on your smartphone, you can add, change and delete contacts keeping all your numbers nicely organized from anywhere!

Still have questions about how to stop unwanted calls on a landline?

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