Almost everyone can testify that they have received unwanted calls from commercial operators, sales and advertising agencies . The calls are more and more frequent, both on the home landline phone and on the mobile phone, coming mainly from the telephone companies and also from the operators who promise lower bills for electricity and gas.
In some cases it can become a real hammering, which leads to not answering practically any unknown number that is present in the address book, with the risk, however, of losing calls from old friends of whom I do not have the number or from people who want to contact us to deliver us parcels (in case we wait for a courier) or who are looking for us for professional reasons.
Fortunately, technology has gone ahead and offers effective tools to be able to block most of these annoying calls.
We see in this guide how to block unwanted commercial calls on landlines and mobile phones, so that we can only receive calls from unknown users who are looking for us for other reasons.
READ ALSO -> Block unknown numbers on Whatsapp
1) Register of oppositions
One of the weapons that we can use against unwanted and commercial calls, foreseen from the legal point of view, is the so-called opposition register.
The telephone numbers entered in the opposition register will be cleared and deleted from the list of callbacks of the televisions.
In fact, the law provides for the theoretical obligation for those who make marketing, that is to say those who use the telephone to promote commercial services and products, to communicate the numbers they intend to call to this register of oppositions.
In theory, therefore, those who enroll in the opposition register should never be called by agencies, call centers and honest companies that ask for authorization.
Enrollment in the opposition register can be done via the web by filling out a simple form, but only by people who are holders of a telephone subscription.
Enrollment in the opposition register is therefore the first thing to do if we are no longer able to receive unwanted calls from these agencies, companies or telephone operators.
The opposition register is only used to reject commercial calls to a landline number .
The problem is that those who do telemarketing hardly update the lists of numbers to call by comparing them with those of the opposition register, also many companies do not give a damn and do not respect it absolutely.
In theory, those who do not respect the register of oppositions go against the law and should receive penalties, especially if they phone with the number covered by anonymity which is always illegal.
So this solution could be fine on landline numbers (even if they call anyway even if we are registered in the register), unfortunately it does not work very well, making registration almost useless .
A strategy for distinguishing advertising calls and blocking them is as follows :
Whenever we receive a call from a number that we do not have in the phone book and that could be a commercial call, we do not answer and look for that number on the Tellows.it site or on the Chistachiamando.it site .
If any match is found, then that number is definitely to be avoided and put on the list of blocked numbers.
Tellows will tell each issue if it is commercial with a vote from 1 to 10 on the degree of persistence and annoyance caused, going so far as to define the most persistent and the most deceptive operators as "telephone terrorism".
If the number is not found, you can call it back if you want to know who was calling us.
In the case of a number not present on Tellows, but instead a commercial call, you can write that number on the Tellows website and add it to the list of unwanted callers in Italy, so that other people will be able to recognize and block it.
2) How to block unwanted commercial calls on Android
If we use an Android smartphone, the filters available as an app are significantly more effective, because they are created based on the reviews of other users; the latter release feedback and comment each time they receive an unwanted call, thus generating an increasingly effective filter for other users.
The best app for this is Should I Answer.
With this app installed on the phone we will have a new numeric dialer (that app that we open to enter phone numbers) able to interface with the phone and control each incoming call, comparing it with their internal databases.
If the incoming call is unwanted or of numbers reported as "serial nuisances", it will not even ring the phone by hanging up immediately; the block type and filter sensitivity can be easily adjusted within the app settings.
It is currently the most effective app to avoid any type of commercial call on Android, but let's remember to provide all the permissions (even to replace the original phone app) and to insert it in the exceptions of energy saving, so as to be able to effectively block all types unwanted call.
If we have a fairly recent Android phone (Android 8.0 or 9.0), Google has integrated a spam filter for calls, so that we can immediately view the nature of unwanted calls and decide whether to answer them or not (we can also block them completely).
To protect yourself from unwanted calls on your Android phone, we can use many other apps similar to the one already reported, such as the ones we talked about in the guide on how to block calls from private or unknown numbers with Android and iPhone .
3) How to block unwanted commercial calls on iPhone
If we own an iPhone, we can block unwanted calls using an app called Truecaller.
By installing this app and providing all the required permissions we will be able to see in advance who is calling us, with a warning window present during the rings (it will appear as a red window with the word SPAM at the top).
In addition to providing an indication of incoming calls, it can also block them altogether so as not to even ring the phone unnecessarily.
Once subscribed to the service (necessary to be able to benefit from all the functions of the app), we can also use the internal chat to send messages and photos with other users of the app, also providing valid feedback and comments on any phone numbers. not yet included in the database (one of the largest in the world).
In another article, we pointed out the apps to avoid advertising calls on the iPhone, which we can use as an alternative to the one already indicated.
READ ALSO: Block calls from Call Centers with Truecaller on iPhone and Android
4) How to block unwanted commercial calls on landlines
Obtaining effective protection on a landline phone is very difficult, since to filter them we will have to use devices similar to traditional answering machines or use a very modern and expensive landline phone.
However, if we receive calls via VoIP (as in most cases with FTTH and FTTC fiber optics), we can always use a modem with filtering functionality to block incoming calls from numbers not in the phone book or by creating your own personal filter for the most annoying numbers.
From this point of view, the best VoIP modem router that we can use to block unwanted commercial calls on a landline phone is the AVM Fritz! Box 7530.
With this modem router we will have advanced options to manage the phone book, to block calls from numbers not in the phone book or from anonymous calls and create your own "black list" with the most annoying numbers.
Eventually you will get effective protection against all the most annoying advertising agencies that abuse telemarketing and you will avoid receiving any unwanted calls even from the landline phone.
In another article we have seen how to find out the number of those who call anonymously, excellent for blocking those bontemponi or dishonest agencies that call users with anonymous, in the hope of being able to market (often they are good and good scams).
