Dealing with mobile Spam

Nuisance of mobile Spam is getting worse everyday. Here is my way of dealing with it if you want to save some harassment to yourself.

A. Nokia provides in built powerful call filtering functions, which I was not aware of until recently. Basically you need to make different “contact groups” of people whose call you would like to take urgently (Contacts> contact groups). For example make a contact group named “Meeting”. Add all the people whose call you would like to take even in a meeting. Next, Create a new “profile” and name it say Meeting. Now when you set different parameters for the profile, you can specify weather the phone rings for all calls or only for certain “contact group”. Deselect “all calls” and select the specifically created contact group Meeting. Set the tone or maybe vibrate only or beep once in tones section. Now you are ready to use the profile. When you step into a meeting just change your profile to meeting. You phone will ring/ vibrate only if someone from the contact group Meeting calls you. Fr all other calls it will remain silent. Later, you can check missed calls and call them back. You can create multiple profiles like this for every situation- sleeping driving or just pissed off. You can also make a contact group called known numbers and add all contacts there for use when you want to receive calls only from known numbers.

Note: In some new models, Nokia has made it difficult to add multiple contacts to contact groups. You have to select each contact one by one. You can also try PC suite to set up the contact group.

B. Try registering with national do not call registry. SMS to 1909 with keywords 'START DND' for registration. If you are being harassed by some specific company try and see if their website has a link to deregister from their database. Most of the irritating banks have a link on their website to stop them from calling you. These measures are rarely useful. But I still recommend it. It will have some minor effect at least. And in any case after registering in do not call registry if you still get a call, the caller is on wrong side of law, which can be useful.

C. Finally, for most paranoid amongst you, try using Spam software. To deal with SMS Spam I use Best Spam killer by smartphoneware. I have set it to filter all messages from unknown numbers unless they contain specific keywords like “ Account credited “ :)

To Avoid call Spam, I used to use Mobisy’s spam manager (Freeware). Basically once you add a number to its list, whenever that number calls you, Call will be automatically rejected- it wont ring / show in missed calls. He will hear “this number is busy. Please try again later.” You can later check the log of rejected calls if you wish. (I was very hesitant to disclose this software. Anyway, lets hope some people never read this blog lest they figure out why my phone is always busy) However recently I have switched to ballballer blacklist lite. It serves the same purpose with additional benefit of in built database of Spam numbers for your country. When a known Spam numbers calls you, it’s supposed to warn you. Am yet to receive many Spam calls after installing it. So, can’t comment on its effectiveness. Note that this one is not as fast as mobisys in rejecting calls. The caller actually hears one or two rings before call is disconnected. So it may seem to him that you have seen the call and then disconnected. Note: I am using these software on symbian. However, most of them have android, iphone and blackberry versions.

Together, these steps should make your life much more productive. However always be aware that Spam filtering is double edged sword and if you become too aggressive you may miss on some extremely urgent calls. Use these tools with discretion. You don’t want to miss your family’s frantic calls from a PCO. And you don’t even want too miss you Bais calls to wake you up when you are oversleeping.