Vodafone Blocks 2m Nuisance Calls A Day

Vodafone claims to have blocked more than 100 million nuisance calls in the past six months and stops more than two million automated calls for PPI offers, accident claims and other scams from reaching customers each day.

The operator introduced automatic network level blocks last year and users are unaware if they have received an unwanted communication. The majority of these are from automatic diallers capable of making thousands of simultaneous calls.

Vodafone nuisance calls

So far, nearly 65,000 numbers have been blocked but Vodafone says it will do more to stop even greater numbers with a special unit to prevent unwanted or threating calls.

“Our focus is on liberating our customers from the stress of unwanted or fraudulent calls,” said Glafkos Persianis, commercial director at Vodafone.

“This system and the vigilance of the expert team, which runs it, is a great example of that ethos in action. We have also shared our intelligence with industry bodies and the regulator in a bid to create a united front against the sophisticated criminal gangs behind the scams.”

There have been several industry initiatives to reduce the number of nuisance calls, which the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has warned is rising, with Ofcom launching a free ‘text-to-register’ service that lets you opt out of them with an SMS.

BT recently rolled out ‘BT Protect’ – a similar network level blacklist system that redirects such calls to a virtual voicemail box. The service is opt-in rather than automatic, but the company claims around 30 million nuisance calls would be blocked every week if all of its users switch it on.

BT figures show that accident claims made up 39 percent of the typical 31.2 million nuisance calls observed in a week, followed by PPI and computer scams on 9 percent.

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