Verizon to offer free spam and robocall protection starting in March

[Shawn Knight]

In context: Unsolicited calls have been a thorn in the side of consumers long before the mobile revolution. Much like junk mail through the postal service made its way to e-mail, spammers have simply shifted their operations to fall in line with the current technological landscape.

Verizon in March will begin rolling out free spam alerting and call blocking features to wireless customers whose smartphones support them.

The features were previously part of Call Filter (formerly Caller Name ID), a premium service offered by Verizon for $2.99 per month, per line. Call Filter also allows subscribers to see a photo of a caller so long as they have uploaded one to their profile.

As The Verge highlighted in mid-2017, Verizon’s decision to charge for these features was puzzling considering competitors AT&T and T-Mobile offered similar solutions without the paywall.

Joe Russo, senior vice president of network operations for Verizon, said the company has alerted wireline customers to nearly a billion potentially malicious robocalls since last year and has identified close to 300 million numbers associated with robocalling and spam to date.

Russo said more information on how to sign up for the free service on Android and iOS will be provided closer to launch.

Lead photo courtesy Charles Taylor via Getty Images

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/78349-verizon-offer-free-spam-robocall-protection-starting-march.html

 

[QuantumPhysics]

I'm not going to pay your extra to do something you should already be doing.

If enough people report enough numbers as spam, then you should be blocking them or discontinuing their service contract.

 

[Unusual Kmc]

... shouldn't this already be part of their normal service?

 

[psycros]

Its unbelievable to me that caller ID spoofing is even possible. That is is possible tells me that either caller IDs aren't even assigned by the phone companies or their doing NO background checks before selling fake IDs to telecriminals. In an ideal world the FCC would be doing something about this, but unfortunately their no longer on the side of consumers and are now helping Big Telecom screw us even harder.

 

[toooooot]

I need it. You see, I have these periods. They usually last few days. Each day I receive a call. Sometimes they drop because when I pick up I listen to see if it is a human or not. They are all displayed as local, or at least from my areas of interest. And just like this my days of agony and torture pass. Then they stop for some time and I don't receive any calls at all. I really need this to stop. I was so desperate to end very frequent calls last time that I changed my phone number. I really dont want to do this again. Now, I could get this with Verizon for "free" Only their service itself would cost me 3 times what I can pay at TMobile unfortunately.

 

[Uncle Al]

Its unbelievable to me that caller ID spoofing is even possible. That is is possible tells me that either caller IDs aren't even assigned by the phone companies or their doing NO background checks before selling fake IDs to telecriminals. In an ideal world the FCC would be doing something about this, but unfortunately their no longer on the side of consumers and are now helping Big Telecom screw us even harder.

If the PBX backbone that these companies use are anything like the old Siemens's I used to have, the feature is part of the main administrative feature pack. These features "could" be assigned to each user to manage themselves although at that time it was not allowed. They also had the ability to block individual numbers by number, prefix, and area code. That was over 30 years ago so you know they are much better now!

The main driver is money. The TELCO's don't want to loose a single customer so they are reluctant to introduce any form or restriction without some kind of compensation ......

 

[treetops]

Funny they charged you for protection from the people they sell your info too

 

[petert]

... shouldn't this already be part of their normal service?

It is US, so the answer is no!

 

[iamcts]

I'm surprised Ajit Pai isn't telling Verizon to keep charging for it, and even raise their prices... considering he's Verizon's lap dog.