Our mobile phones help to keep us connected via calls, messages, and the internet. Staying in touch with friends and loved ones is important to everyone. However, having a mobile phone also opens the possibility of getting unwanted and nuisance calls. These could be from scammers looking to take advantage of gullible people who can be convinced to part with their hard-earned income. Other nuisance calls often come from sales and marketing representatives seeking to make a sale or to get you to sign up for a service you are not interested in.
Everyone has the right to be free of unsolicited calls and to be able to answer their phones without trepidation or annoyance. Fortunately, there are some steps that you can take to reduce nuisance calls to your mobile. We have put this guide together to help you take back control of who can call you and how to stop nuisance calls on mobile phones in the UK.
How to Stop Nuisance Calls on Mobile Phones UK
If you have given your mobile number to a company, you will probably get calls from them to attempt to sell you a product or service. After all, that is how they make an income. The first step in reducing nuisance calls is not to give out your mobile number to any person or business you do not want to be contacted by. These types of calls include cold calls and automated or recorded messages on your mobile. You may also have received calls from companies that provide payment protection insurance claims (PPI), personal injury (PI) claims, and other calls of the same ilk.
Note that if you have not given your number out to a company, then they do not have your permission to call you. For all these types of calls and messages, you can report them to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). Although the ICO will not get back to you in person, they will investigate using whatever information you were able to give them about the call or message.
Don’t accept unwanted calls. You are entitled to hang up and refuse to speak to them. At the start of a call from an unknown number, you should ask if they are trying to sell you anything. If they answer in the affirmative, you can tell them that it is an unsolicited call and that you will be reporting them.
This is how to stop nuisance calls on mobile phones. Act by reporting the companies responsible. This will allow the ICO to deal with the culprits and stop them in the future. They may even be charged a fine. If enough people report these types of unsolicited calls, it will discourage businesses from harassing private individuals. The information you should have on hand when contacting the ICO is the number the call came from, and details of which company called you. However, even without providing complete information, the ICO will do a follow-up investigation.
How to Stop Nuisance Calls on Mobile Phones
If you want to be proactive about reducing nuisance calls, then you should register with the Telephone Preference Service (TPS). Registration is free. The TPS maintains a list of numbers of individuals who are not willing to receive marketing or sales phone calls. If you are registered with TPS then these sales firms and other companies are not legally allowed to call you.
You can contact the TPS telephonically on either 0345 070 0707 or 0207 291 3320. These calls will not carry a charge if you have a mobile deal for free contact to landlines or if you have not used up your free allowance for calls to landlines. Contact your mobile service provider, e.g., Lebara, if you are not sure what your package consists of. Alternatively, you can email them at [email protected]. You can also send them a text message.
Registering with the TPS requires you to provide the following details: your mobile phone number, your email address, and your postcode. Go to the TPS website and fill out the registration form online. This will only take a few minutes but will be well worth your time and effort. The service is automated and thus is available 24/7. You can also register with TPS via a normal message. On your message screen, type TPS, followed by your email address. Send this message to 85095 and your mobile will be registered automatically.
There are certain types of calls the Telephone Preference Service cannot prevent from contacting you. If the call came as a computer-generated call, TPS cannot assist. The reason for this is that the law to date only makes provision for dealing with people who make unwanted calls. Currently, the law does not prevent a computer from making calls. However, you can speak to your mobile service provider to stop such calls in the future.
Scams are another type of call that TPS cannot stop from calling you. Take note of one scam in particular. Someone may call your mobile stating that they work for TPS and ask you to pay for your TPS registration. Treat all scams the same by reporting them to the correct organisation.
You will also want to avoid spam messages. When you receive a spam call, forward the message to 7726. These numbers coincide with the letters that spell SPAM on your keyboard. Your mobile service provider will be notified via a report. There is no charge when you forward the text to 7726.
What happens if you still receive unsolicited calls 28 days after registering with TPS? First, try to remember if you have given out your number to this business. Secondly, inform the caller that you do not want to receive calls from them in the future. Furthermore, some companies might still call your mobile, despite your TPS registration. They are not abiding by the law, and you can report them on the TPS website.
What Else You Can Do to Stop Nuisance Calls on Mobile Phones
We will now look at how to stop nuisance calls on mobile phones, in addition to registering with the TPS. One thing that you can easily do, and that will prevent some nuisance calls, is to be strict with yourself when filling out forms for any business. Be on the lookout for tick boxes where you grant permission to the business or third parties to contact you by mobile. You need to make sure that you do not tick any of these boxes. By refraining from ticking the boxes in question, you are indicating your choice and the business must abide by that decision. Legally they may not call you.
In addition to companies making calls to your mobile phone, there is the possibility that they will try to contact you via text message. The way to deal with this is to reply to their message with the word STOP, typed in capital letters. However, take heed that you should not carry out this action unless the text message identifies the sender. When you receive a nuisance message from an unknown number, any reply from your side will let them (or their system) know that you have an active number, which will result in more text messages from the offender.
How to Hide Your Mobile Number UK
Now we discuss how to hide your mobile number in the UK. You can withhold your number only for specific calls or for all calls. For the former, you just need to dial 141 followed by the phone number you are calling. This tip works for landlines too and was originally put in place to prevent someone you called from dialling 1471 to get your number.
If you want to hide your mobile number on all calls, you can do this from your mobile phone settings. You should follow the instructions for either an Android phone or an iPhone.
For an Android, go to the phone app and click on it. Look for the menu button that has three dots and select it. You will find it at the top of the screen on the right. From this menu, select ‘Settings’. First, click on ‘Supplementary Services’. Thereafter, choose the ‘Show My Caller ID’ option and select ‘Hide number’.
If you have an iPhone, open your ‘Settings’ menu and select ‘Phone’. There will be a tick next to ‘Show My Caller ID’. Deselect the tick.
How to Block 0843 Numbers
Find out here how to block 0843 numbers. For Android owners, you can do the blocking in your call log. Click on the number you want to block then go to the symbol with three dots or click on ‘More’. You will be able to add the caller to your blocked list.
iPhone users should go to ‘Settings’ and select ‘Phone’. Choose the option that says ‘Silence Unknown Callers’. Any calls after this will go to your messages for new numbers that do not appear on your contact list. If a number you want to keep goes here, simply add it to your contact list.
Make use of this guide to take charge of your mobile and prevent nuisance calls.