Potential spam? Spam risk? What these new caller ID messages mean, and what to do about them

Tero Vesalainen // Shutterstock Caller ID used to be a very simple thing in the “landline phones and copper wires” days. If somebody called you, their number showed up on the display, and if it didn’t, then the caller had deliberately blocked caller ID. Then scammers, spammers, and robocalls came along, and things got ugly enough that a lot of people stopped taking calls unless they knew for sure who was calling.  Within the past couple of years, as phone companies adopted new technology, Caller ID has become a challenge. Now, people see a lot of new messages, including ones that say something like “spam likely,” “potential spam,” or “spam risk.” If you’ve ever wondered how your phone carrier decides which calls are likely to be spammy or scammy, and what you should do about them, Spokeo digs into these details. Why Telephone Spams and Scams Became So Common In the early days of the telephone era, every call was connected manually by an operator (a classic visual in old movies). As phones became popular, manual switching was replaced by self-dialing and automated analog switching equipment. In more recent decades, that equipment in turn was replaced by computerized equipment and eventually high-capacity fiber optics lines and computer-driven Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, phone systems. Those new computerized systems made it possible for companies to batch-call telephone numbers at rates of up to tens of thousands per hour. That’s why there are about 4 billion robocalls in the U.S. each month, according to the FCC (nuisance calls are the FCC’s top consumer complaint and correspondingly its top priority).  The bipartisan Pallone-Thune TRACED Act, which was passed a few years ago, pushed back against that irritating flood of calls. Among its other provisions, it required telephone carriers to implement new protocols called STIR and SHAKEN, which gave them powerful new tools to identify, validate, and screen the calls and callers across their networks. That’s what led to all of those new Caller ID messages, including “potential spam,” “spam risk,” and their equivalents.   Spam Risk, Potential Spam … What Do They Mean?  The phone rings, and the display says “Spam risk,” “Potential spam,” or maybe even “Scam likely.” So how and why does your phone carrier decide which incoming numbers represent potential spam or scam risk calls?  Well, the upside of handling 4 billion nuisance calls each month is that it gives the phone companies a lot of data to work with. The companies (or rather, the outside specialists they partner with) have used those calls, and consumer complaints about them, to train sophisticated AI algorithms. Now, their systems are able to recognize calling patterns (and out-of-country phone exchanges or carriers) that match those of known scammy or spammy calls.  To be clear, no system is ever going to be 100% accurate. You’ll get “spam risk” messages for legitimate calls sometimes, and you’ll also get spammy calls that don’t trigger an alert. But on the whole, you can confidently ignore any calls that show those alerts. What Happens if I Answer a Spam Risk Call?  You may be wondering at this point, given that the system isn’t entirely accurate, whether it’s worth answering a call that’s flagged as potential spam. That’s especially true if you’re expecting an important call from someone who’s not already on your contacts list. Unfortunately, most of the things that can happen at this point are bad. At a minimum, you’ve wasted a few moments of your time listening to a spiel you could have spared yourself. But you’ve also told the robocallers that your number is valid, and that you’ll answer it, which means you can end up getting more calls. On the whole, it’s better to let the call go, and then later check the phone logs on your carrier’s website to see what the caller’s actual number was.  The worst-case scenario is that if the call is coming from a scammer rather than a spammer, you may have set yourself up to be targeted for fraud, phishing, or other unpleasant experiences. Scam callers are usually after your money or your personal information (which is then used for identity theft). They may pretend to be from Social Security, the IRS, your bank, or some other authority, but they’ll ask for things that no legitimate caller would, such as:  Personal information such as your date of birth, SSN, or driver’s license number Passwords, PINs, or authentication codes you receive on your phone Your credit card number or banking information Immediate payment, but only in the form of gift cards, cryptocurrency, wire transfers, or other difficult-to-reverse payment methods How to Block Potential Spam Calls Arguably, the ideal scenario with these calls is to never see them at all, and that’s easy enough to do.It’s just a matter of setting up your phone to block them automatically. Here’s how to do it.  Blocking potential spam calls on Android Android phones have the option of screening spam calls, as long as you’re using the default “Phone by Google” app for your calls. Some manufacturers set their own calling app as the default, so you may need to consult your phone maker’s site if you don’t see these menus on your phone.  To use this feature:  Tap the Phone app on your home screen to launch it.  Tap the menu icon (the three dots, stacked vertically) in the top-right corner.  Tap Settings, then Spam and Call Screen. Tap the See Caller & Spam ID toggle to turn it on if it’s not on already.  Finally, tap to turn on Filter Spam Calls.  Your phone won’t ring when those calls come in, and you won’t get a voicemail notification for them, but they’ll still show up on your call record and you’ll still be able to hear any voicemail left.  Note that the exact menu options may vary with older or future versions of Android. Blocking potential spam calls on iPhone Apple’s iOS doesn’t (at the time of writing) have a similarly direct method of blocking spam calls.  What it does have is the ability to mute all unknown callers, which is to say everyone who’s not on your contacts list or your existing call history. That’s a pretty blunt instrument, but if you get a lot of spam calls you may find it’s worth trying.  To activate that feature, these are the steps:  Open Settings. Tap Phone.  Scroll down until you see Silence Unknown Callers, and tap it.  Tap the toggle to turn the feature on.  If you find that you’re missing calls you didn’t want to miss, you can either add those numbers to your contacts or turn the feature back on again.  Other spam-blocking options If you have an Android phone, you may have noticed when you turned on Filter Spam Calls that there’s another option immediately below it, called Verified Calls. That’s a sort of enriched Caller ID for participating Google-validated businesses, which displays the company’s name, a graphic, and the reason why they’re calling. It’s not technically spam-blocking, but it does help you decide whether or not to answer the call. You can use it with or without the Filter Spam Calls feature.  A second option is to choose a third-party call-blocking app from the Play Store or App Store. There are a lot of those out there, with varying combinations of features, so you may need to view or try several before you get one you like. The good news is that most of them are free or offer a free trial, so it won’t necessarily cost you anything to sample several options  You can read about them here.  You may not think of it as a spam-blocking option, but the National Do Not Call Registry is also a useful tool. It takes a month for your registration to kick in, and some classes of callers are still allowed to contact you (charities, debt collectors, political groups, and survey companies, to be specific), and you’ll still need to worry about criminals or unscrupulous companies that don’t follow the rules.  So, while it helps, it won’t completely shut down the flow of calls.  You Can Take Some Degree of Control In short, while scammy and spammy calls rain down in a torrent over most people, you don’t necessarily have to get wet (to stretch a metaphor). It’s probably not possible to avoid all spam calls short of never answering the phone, but you can weed out most of them pretty straightforwardly by following the steps outlined here.  It may take a few weeks of trial and error to find which level of screening offers you the maximum protection with a minimum of inconvenience, but the good thing is that–unlike most such problems–you’re in control and you decide where to draw the line. And that’s a very good feeling indeed. This story was produced by Spokeo and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.