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Unwanted calls

Steve Maskery

Steve Maskery

Old Oak
Joined
Jul 27, 2014
Messages
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Location
87290 Laplagne, France
I have two phone numbers, one UK, one French.
Although not unheard of, it is very rare for someone I know, or want to hear from, to call me on my French number. Yet it rings several times a day. The screen lights up:
Unknown number.
Potential Fraud.
Suspected Spam.

I simply don't bother answering. I got caught out last week when someone I did want to hear from was mistakenly ignored. Opps. (sic), as they say in these parts.

I have just received an email from Bloctel. I think it is the equivalent of the TPS in the UK. The short version is that it will soon be illegal to do cold calling without the explicit consent of the callee.*

I think it is a good thing.

S

* For those unable to sleep, here is the translation:

Hello,

We are writing to inform you that, effective August 11, 2026, the rules governing telephone solicitation are changing pursuant to the Law of June 30, 2025. This reform aims to give individuals greater control over commercial solicitations and to ensure that only consumers who have given their consent can be contacted.

From August 11, 2026: Mandatory consent. A business will no longer be able to contact you for commercial purposes without first obtaining your explicit, freely given, specific, informed, and revocable consent. In practice, this means you can only be solicited by phone if you have expressly agreed to it beforehand.

Discontinuation of the Bloctel service. To date, consumers wishing to opt out of telephone solicitation have had to register on the Bloctel list. As of August 11, 2026, registration will no longer be required: without consent, telephone solicitation for commercial purposes will be prohibited. The Bloctel service will therefore become obsolete and be discontinued. Violations of these rules may be reported via the SignalConso platform.

Until August 10, 2026. The current framework remains in effect through August 10, 2026. If you are registered with Bloctel, your registration remains valid until that date.

Sincerely,
The Bloctel Portal.

Please do not reply to this automatically generated email.
CONSOPROTEC has been selected by the Ministry of the Economy, Finance and the Recovery to take over and develop the Bloctel public service for a five-year period.
To learn more about the processing of your data and the exercise of your rights: https://www.bloctel.gouv.fr/donnees-personnelles
 
Wish we had something like it. Do the call centres in India follow the law?

Pete
 
I've had the same mobile number for 25years and it must be on every scam, survey, call center list going. The numbers used to be easy to recognise and ignore but they started using mobile numbers so its harder to tell if they are shady. My phone shows possible fraud telemarkers so I block those numbers. I must get 20 a day. If I accidently pick it up thinking it is genuine I will then get lots more for a few days. Unless it rings with a known name I just ignore it.
 
We have similar legislation in the UK but it doesn’t get enforced.

Having been involved in discussions with government about how big tech could solve this problem (which they easily could) I despair that no action has been taken.

If you do get calls from scammers etc text the number to 7726 as at least that leads to some action being taken to take the number down.

Another similar area that big tech could solve (or compensate those who get stung for) is fraudulent adverts.
 
wallace said:
I've had the same mobile number for 25years and it must be on every scam, survey, call center list going. The numbers used to be easy to recognise and ignore but they started using mobile numbers so its harder to tell if they are shady. My phone shows possible fraud telemarkers so I block those numbers. I must get 20 a day. If I accidently pick it up thinking it is genuine I will then get lots more for a few days. Unless it rings with a known name I just ignore it.
Click to expand...

I've had mine even longer, years before they added extra numbers on the front as they were running out of capacity. My number is everywhere as it was used as my business contact number so plastered over my vehicle, letterheads and business cards

I block and report numbers and don't get as many nuisance calls as you but if I do inadvertantly pick one up I then also get a spate of others for a week or so. Nuisance texts are another issue these days as well.

The problem I find now is that you can't always ignore unknown mobile numbers as they're used by businesses and more importantly the GP practice so if waiting for a GP or MSK call it can easily come from a mobile and can't be ignored or you have to go through the whole lengthy process again.
 
I'm fortunate in that I don't get that many scam calls. I changed my number about 20 years ago (after getting loads of spam text messages) and since then have done my best not to give my phone number to any companies. Where companies insist, I used to give them the landline number (which went straight to answerphone and rejected text messages) but since that's gone we bought a cheap mobile with a PAYG SIM that only needs to have "some chargeable use" every six months (which we achieve by sending a text message every 5 months). Any company that wants a mobile number gets that number rather than our normal ones and every now and again we'll look at the cheap mobile and see whether there's anything important (which there rarely is).

Unfortunately, Barclays insist on a mobile number and use it for some transaction validations. I've never managed to get them to stop sending me spam text messages advertising various services, despite asking them repeatedly.
 
I received a suspect EE call a while back, with the caller having an Indian accent, so I presumed from some call centre on the Sub-Continent. I played along with him for a while and eventually told him to go and 'choke on his chapti'. I was in town the next day and called into the EE shop and enquired about cold calling and the reply back from a staff member was quite emphatic. 'No, not ever, under any circumstances, we have no call centre in India'

The bloke in the shop almost collapsed laughing when I told him what I said to the caller - Rob
 
Ringing. Answer phone:

" 'Ello, 'n,' ow arr yow today?" complete with "busy office" tape in the background...

Reply: "Better before you called!". Phone goes down.

Childish? Mehh, still feels like ,
I got one back.
 
Ring Ring

"Hello."

"Duct Cleaning Service calling." East Indian accent.

"My ducks are clean. Can you wash my chickens and turkeys?"

"What?"

"If you can't help me I'll have to go. Bye."

Pete
 
In The Netherlands luckily the number of unwanted calls is quite limited. But on my Swedish phone I will get them at least once a day and often quite a bit more than that. As a consequence I tend to ignore all calls on that number. It just isn't worth my time. But, just like you experienced, that will lead to some problems of its own. Much of the problem is caused by the Swedish habit to have all information you'd normally consider private out in the open in the name of transparency. You want to know what someone paid for their house, or what they make each year? Just look it up. It is legally published here. And much more too. GDPR anyone? Nah, we have our own Swedish laws...
 
I had to do a sim-swop from button phone to iPhone.
Visited Vodacom store. At the same time I bought a sim card for the old Nokia. (eventually did not pay for it) Loaded ZAR10.00 airtime.
The new number was not communicated by me to anyone else, not even family.
That was 1st July.
On the 3rd a call from some insurance company "How are you today?" That already raises the blood pressure to stroke levels. When asked where she got the number "from customer database." I informed her politely she is lying and that her company will be reported to the Police.
End of call.

I then opened a spreadsheet to log the calls and SMS's.
As of yesterday afternoon 21 calls and 4 SMS. One number was 6 times in the space of an hour.
The service provider is Vodacom, so I will threaten them with legal action for selling my number. (will not go that far as our Police are just as corrupt)
 
Landline phone, left to go to the answer phone/leave number, message. No message - number gets blocked... if I get there in time.

Mobile phone, if it rings and number displayed not known, I let that go to voice mail - no message left number gets blocked and reported as spam.

Sometimes I get a text message along the lines of "you missed a call from X at X time... " - as I've got the phone with me/at the side of me when the text comes up I *know* I've not missed any call because it didn't ring. Block and report the number.

The odd times I answer the mobile - never the landline now - I do not speak but wait for the caller to speak first...
 
Phil said:
I had to do a sim-swop from button phone to iPhone.
Visited Vodacom store. At the same time I bought a sim card for the old Nokia. (eventually did not pay for it) Loaded ZAR10.00 airtime.
The new number was not communicated by me to anyone else, not even family.
That was 1st July.
On the 3rd a call from some insurance company "How are you today?" That already raises the blood pressure to stroke levels. When asked where she got the number "from customer database." I informed her politely she is lying and that her company will be reported to the Police.
End of call.

I then opened a spreadsheet to log the calls and SMS's.
As of yesterday afternoon 21 calls and 4 SMS. One number was 6 times in the space of an hour.
The service provider is Vodacom, so I will threaten them with legal action for selling my number. (will not go that far as our Police are just as
Click to expand...

It’s more likely Phil (assuming it’s the same in your part of the world as it is in the UK) that the scammers know where in their sequence of numbers Vodacom are up to in activating their allocation of numbers. Their dialler will be programmed to add the next sequence each day.

I’d be surprised if the number was being sold as marketing data by the service provider (but again that’s based on how it works in the UK and Europe).
 
I feel you pain @Steve Maskery
I've got a French eSIM on my phone for when I'm in France. I leave it turned off as much as possible as it gets at least 3 cold calls per day. When I signed up for the account I was shocked to get a cold call within 2 hours - I was wondering whether I'd been given someone else's old number but I think that the mobile companies are just very free with giving out details!
 
Blackswanwood said:
It’s more likely Phil (assuming it’s the same in your part of the world as it is in the UK) that the scammers know where in their sequence of numbers Vodacom are up to in activating their allocation of numbers. Their dialler will be programmed to add the next sequence each day.

I’d be surprised if the number was being sold as marketing data by the service provider (but again that’s based on how it works in the UK and Europe).
Click to expand...
It's also possible that someone cancelled their contract (possibly after getting too many scam calls 🤣 ) and the service provider re-used the number for the new SIM.
 
Steve as an expat you can have fun with spam calls, answer the call in your poshest English accent and they generally put the phone straight down. It works for me most of the time until the call is actually from someone you know….
 
My wife a number of years ago took a call from one of the "have you had a car accident" companies. She put on a squeaky broad Geordie voice saying "ee how did you know?" at which point the caller put her through to another person. She led him on for a good 15 minutes saying she'd driven off the top of Snowdon, then she said "hold on I have to answer the door". Continuing he asked who was it and she said "my carer". "Which insurance company do you use?" he said "oh I don't need that", "why", "well I can't drive". There was quite a lot of swearing in both English and Indian before he hung up while we just disolved laughing.
 
Someone I worked with in my last job apparently had a call from someone "about the accident you were involved in recently". He played along. They told him that the "other party" involved in the accident were taking legal action and therefore it was essential he did the same to protect himself. He continued to play along, asking for more and more details about this legal action (what the "other party" were claiming etc, carefully re-using their "other party" terminology). He then said "and can you tell me which solicitor the dead badger has chosen to use for this legal action?"
 
Once upon a time, when I had a landline, I decided to waste the time of one of these callers.
I listened for a bit, with the occasional "uh-hu" and "mmm". They obviously had a script and were in full flow. I carefully laid the phone down on the stairs and went of to do Stuff. I was delighted when I came back after 20 minutes AND THEY WERE STILL GOING!

Happy day.
S
 
Blackswanwood said:
It’s more likely Phil (assuming it’s the same in your part of the world as it is in the UK) that the scammers know where in their sequence of numbers Vodacom are up to in activating their allocation of numbers. Their dialler will be programmed to add the next sequence each day.

I’d be surprised if the number was being sold as marketing data by the service provider (but again that’s based on how it works in the UK and Europe).
Click to expand...

Robert, you could be right.
There was a talk on Wednesday, at our Clubhouse, on phishing, fraud etc. and the same comment also came up.

Vodacom reacted, e-mail just arrived.
They locked my number! :rolleyes: I replied to them that thay have not dealt with the actual problem or even bothered to investigate, so either unlock or I move to MTN or any of the other service providers.
 
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