This App Promises to Cut Your Robocalls by a Large Margin

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Have you noticed a surge in the number of robocalls you receive on your smartphone or even your landline? Even though state and federal regulators have increased their enforcement efforts to reduce the number of robocalls, things have only improved slightly. In 2022, U.S. consumers received more than 50.3 billion robocalls. That’s only a slight improvement over the 50.5 billion total robocalls that were received during 2021.

What Is a Robocall?

When you receive an unsolicited phone call that when you pick up plays a pre-recorded message, that’s a robocall. “Legitimate” organizations, telemarketers, and bad guys alike make use of robocalls, as it is a quick and easy way to call millions of phone numbers every day.

Spam (robo) calls can include:

• Telemarketer calls from telemarketers that are attempting to get you to buy products from both legitimate and not-so-legitimate companies.
• Calls from bill collectors attempting to get you to pay for past-due bills. These can be legitimate, or they can also be from scammers claiming you or a relative owe money to when you’ve never actually done business with the company they claim they’re calling from.
• “Viahing” callers posing as the Internal Revenue Service, Amazon, UPS, Fed-Ex, and other reputable companies, who are attempting to trick you into sharing your business- or personal-related information.

I want to make it clear that not all robocalls are malicious. Many doctors, dentists, legal firms, etc. will place robocalls to remind patients or clients that they have an upcoming appointment. However, I also want to make it clear that the vast majority of robocalls are from scammers.

Why Do I Receive So Many Robocalls? How Do They Get My Phone Number?

So, why are we all getting more robocalls as time goes by, and how the heck do they get our phone numbers and other information?

While there are several ways to obtain an individual’s phone number and other information, there are five main ways that scammers get you info:

• You’ve listed your phone number on your social media account(s) or on other online sites and services. Many social media users include their phone numbers, email addresses, and other information on social sites. This is especially true for those that use the accounts to promote their business offerings.
• You’ve answered a previous robocall. When you answer a spammer’s robocall, you let the bad actors know that your phone number is active. They will then mark your phone number as “active” in their nefarious database and use it to make additional calls at a later date (or later that day).
• It’s quite possible that one of the thousands of data brokers around the globe has your information and has sold it to scammers or marketers. Data brokers make it nearly impossible to keep your contact information out of the hands of robocallers. Luckily, as we’ll see below, there are ways to get data brokers to delete your data from their servers.
• Your personal information may have been exposed in one of the data breaches that seem to happen on a daily basis. Luckily, there are identity theft protection companies that will continually scan the web for your information and alert you when they find it.
• Your data is being shared on the dark web. If your information has been exposed in a data breach, there is a very good chance that the info will show up for sale or trade on the dark web. Again, there are services that will monitor the dark web, alerting you if your data is found.

What Can I Do to Stop Robocalls?

There are several ways to stop or at least greatly reduce the number of robocalls you receive.

1. Use your iPhone or Android phone’s built-in scam prevention features. Apple and Google both provide features in iOS and Android, respectively to prevent scammers from calling you. Check the Apple or Google website for more information.
2. Make use of your cellular carrier’s call-blocking apps or services. Most major cellular carriers provide apps or services that can block unwanted calls.
3. Download a third-party robocall-blocking app. There are several reputable developers that offer call-blocking apps. While many of these require a monthly or annual subscription fee, they can be quite effective in blocking scammer calls.
4. Add your phone number(s) to the National Do-Not-Call Registry. The U.S. government offers a website where you can enter your phone number, placing it on a registry of phone numbers that robocallers are legally required to not dial. Of course, their compliance depends on how dishonest they are, so don’t count on this working.
5. Don’t answer robocalls. If you don’t recognize the phone number shown on your phone’s screen or if the caller’s name and number have been blocked, simply do not answer the call.
6. Keep your phone number off of social media and other online locations. The fewer places you share your information, the less chance of having it used against you.
7. Remove your phone number and other personal information from data brokers’ databases. This one sounds easier than it is, due to the sheer number of data brokers there are in the world. Luckily, there is a better way to remove your info from data brokers’ servers. You can read more about that in the section below.

The Easiest Way to Block Robocalls and Remove Your Information From Data Brokers is to Use Aura

While you can take several steps to reduce the number of robocalls you receive, while also removing your information from data brokers, you’ll find that it’s an involved process and that you’ll find that there are a lot of balls you need to keep in the air. But, what if you’re not into juggling, Is there an easier way?

Happily, there are services that will block robocalls, search the web for your information, and remove your information from data brokers’ servers. Okay, you say, but that sounds as if I’ll need at least two separate services or apps.

This is true. Luckily, there is a single service that can take care of all of this for you, while also scoring additional privacy protection, password management, internet filtering and other protection for your children, VPN protection, and more, all from a single provider and all at a reasonable price.

Aura offers blocking of robocalls, to keep the scammers that already have your information out of your hair, while also searching known data brokers, contacting them to tell them to remove your personal information from their servers.

The Aura app sits on your iPhone or Amazon device, screening your calls by comparing incoming numbers with the numbers of known spammers. It also uses advanced artificial intelligence to pick up unknown callers, screening the calls for scams and spam, and only letting legitimate calls through so you won’t miss any important calls. The only losers here are the spammers.

Aura also offers VPN protection for your desktop and mobile devices, while also providing protection for your offspring while they’re online, protecting them while they’re online, even while they’re gaming.

The company also offers protection against financial fraud, identity theft, and more. A handy password manager keeps all of your passwords at the ready in a protected database. Its antivirus protection keeps your devices virus-free, and there are several other protective features, all in one subscription.

For more information about Aura and its services, be sure to read this thorough review where we cover Aura’s services in-depth.

I strongly recommend giving Aura a try. While the provider is a bit expensive, the services it offers make it a great value, while also making it easy to keep track of everything through a single interface. Plus, with the 14-day free trial, you can’t go wrong.

Visit Aura’s site directly here.

Please note that we might earn commission from affiliate links to Aura. Read our disclosures.