Figuring out how to stop robocalls for good is stressful, annoying, and in most cases, a futile exercise. Robocalls are the worst. Some of us more than others, but we all get them and we all hate them. These annoying calls, texts, and junk emails are made by the billions across the US, some legal like helpful reminders from businesses you frequent and some ranging from particularly annoying at best to incredibly dangerous at worst. Not all of us are going to fall for the scam calls and start sending strangers cash by accident, but some do and the systems that lead to your number landing on these call lists can often times have your personal accounts comprised, or much more terrifying than that, facilitate full-on identity theft. But there are much easier and effective options than manually trying to fight back on your own to protect your phone number, bank account, and stress levels.
How to stop robocalls the easy way
There are ways to deal with these annoying robocalls, with both reactive and proactive approaches. On the reactive side of things, you can take steps on your personal device to, at least, reduce the number of robocalls you get by manually blocking repeat offenders from delivering calls to your number and hiding numbers that aren’t on your personal contact list.
How to block known numbers on Android devices:
- Open the Phone app and tap on the “call history” tab.
- Find the number from which you received a robocall.
- Tap on the number and then on “block” in the menu that appears.
How to block all unknown numbers from getting through on Android devices:
- Open the Phone app and tap on the three dots in the top right corner.
- Select “settings” from the drop-down menu and tap on “blocked numbers.”
- Toggle the switch next to “unknown.”
However, there are some clear downfalls here; we all know the robocall services are just going to bounce the incoming numbers around, which essentially makes the blocking process a futile one at best, and limiting incoming calls to those on your contact list can lead to missing important calls from legitimate sources (the bank, your mechanic, clinic, and the list goes on).
This is where Icogni comes in
In most cases, your number ends of up on a massive wholesale list of contacts courtesy of data broker companies that scrape the web and then sell them to the highest bidder (or likely anyone looking to start up their very own robocall list to ruin lives all across the country). And it’s not just robocalls, annoying spam texts, and junk mail here either. These data brokers also dish up data bases to the public in many cases, putting as much of your dirty laundry, personal data, financial information, and more out in the open.
Needless to say, it can be very difficult to get your number removed from these lists with companies doing everything but breaking the law to make the process as tedious and annoying as possible.
And this is where an automated personal information removal service like Incogni comes in.
Icogni is a subscription service that will essentially do all of the heavy lifting for you. The service estimates it would take hundreds of hours for an individual to go out and exercise every opt-out procedure with the various data brokers, only to have more pop-up over and over again. It also restarts the process every three months to ensure you stay off the lists as brokers and robocaller companies update their databases.
Icogni will algorithmically track down databases most likely to be dealing in your data and then get to work sending out a constant wave of opt-out requests that follow preferred broker opt-out procedures and even handles rejection appeals on your behalf. It will remove your data from 180 or more data broker lists, including 60+ major people search sites.
Keeping your personal information out of circulation like this reduces your chances of getting scammed, stalked, and having your identity stolen. It also puts you back in control of what potential employers, creditors, insurers, and even dates can know about you.
Icogni now up to 50% off
Subscribing to Icogni to protect your identity and personal information was already a considerably affordable option, especially for folks scouring for an easy way to stop robocalls, protect their identity, and avoid getting bombarded by spam texts. But things just got even less pricey for 9to5Google readers. You can now land a year subscription at 50% off for $6.49 per month or score 10% off the annual plan using code 9to5Google at checkout. Get a closer look at how it all works right here.
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