After repeated data breaches that no company really seems to give a s— about my phone is blowing up with literally hundreds of spam calls and texts month. I get and make MAAAAYBE 2 or 3 important calls per month, 180-200 of the rest are literally all spam. Anyone have any suggestions, apps ect that they have found refuge with? I really don’t use SMS that much either, mostly it’s via signal, discord whats app, ect…
Just to put it out there I run CalyxOS on a Pixel 5a.
Nice to see the reddit attitude making it’s way here. OP is downvoting all of the correct answers and the bad advice is getting upvoted.
To everyone reading this. If you don’t want spam calls stop answering numbers you don’t recognize. You should also go to your carrier and opt in to whatever spam blocking service they offer (should be free).
I would also advise as I did in another comment to keep your real number on GV or similar with decent spam protection/blocking and use a direct number you can burn if needed.
But… You are the most upvoted comment… And seems good advice… I’m so confused
At the time of that comment I and all of the other legit advice was getting shit in and downvoted by OP and others.
I use T-Mobile Spam protection and configured it to send every unknown number directly to voicemail.
For any telemarketing, spam, etc. calls they get directly ignored without being sent to voicemail.
I’ve been lucky to only have one false positive in 5 years now, cost of doing business.
I don’t have that level of protection turned on and I get very few calls. Both my work and personal numbers are on GV so if somehow either of my direct lines start getting spam bombed I can burn them and get new ones. Thinking about it, I should maybe be prepared and grab one to park as I’ve advised so I have a fresh and clean one ready to go.
I never answer calls from the area code my phone number is from because they are all spam. I haven’t even lived in that area for years. But I still get 3 a day. I can’t even remember the last time I answered one. 2, maybe 3 years ago? I still get them, though.
Edit: I just checked, and I am enrolled in Verizon’s call filter thing.
If you are still getting that many and sometimes more, I would suggest exactly what I did to OP in another comment. Get a new number. Grab one from GV, number barn, etc that hasn’t been used in awhile. Alternatively move your current number (if you want to keep it long term) and get a new direct number.
I have my main number on GV, I’ve had it for over a decade. I ported it to GV from tmo about that long ago. I grew up in Florida so just because I got a 727 area code for my personal direct line, I moved that sim to my work phone when I moves to having 2 phones. That number gets like 5 calls a week if that and they are mostly from house flippers trying to lowball me on a property I don’t own nor have ever seen. The other ones are political bs. My current personal direct line is a local number and that one gets literally zero spam calls, a few texts but nowhere near the insanity that some people deal with. I have no idea how many calls or texts are being blocked by tmo now.
I’ll repeat. If you are getting a shit storm of spam and turning on the carrier level protection doesn’t help, it’s time for a new number. I responded up top level because OP was being obstinate and saying that a new number was pointless because it had been used by deadbeats (paraphrasing here) without seeing the irony in that statement.