If you’re a Verizon subscriber and are tired of all the robocalls you may be getting, there’s some good news for you. This week, Verizon announced that it will offer free spam and robocall protection to its subscribers starting in March.
Known as the Call Filter service, which was previously offered as a $3 add-on for interested Verizon subscribers, was met with some resistance at first because it was a paid option. Verizon now says that it will begin offering the service to all customers, for free. One thing to keep in mind is that this service will come to phones that support the features, which includes iPhones and Android phones.
Verizon is now on the level of T-Mobile and AT&T. Both carriers have been offering the spam protection to their customers for free.
By bringing free robocalls protections, Verizon is empowering their customers to fight against this spam. Robocalls have been a pain for consumers for years, and it only makes it that much harder because spammy callers have found ways to spoof calls from local phone numbers. By using local phone numbers, it makes it more likely that people will pick up calls.
It’s worth mentioning that in late 2018, the Federal Communications Commission mandated that carriers have to adopt a new framework called STIR/SHAKEN by 2019. This framework allows consumers to visually see spam call alerts. AT&T has already begun to work on this, while T-Mobile also began to implement these call verification features it launched last week, but is only supported on the Galaxy Note 9, for now.
Verizon said that details on how to enroll in the features for free will be released closer to launch date. Until then, hang tight and be on the lookout for spam callers. A handy tip I can provide is to do a quick Google search during or after you receive a call you don’t recognize. More often than not, it may be a spam caller that’s spoofing using a local number and you can then block it on your phone. While this solution may not guarantee less spam calls, it will help to reduce them and see results overtime.
