A few years back my son played a practical joke on me. He had a local pizza place we ordered from all the time call me about a large delivery I had supposedly placed that had gone sideways. The number was real. We had called it dozens of times. The call was not.
He had found an online robo-dial service that let him spoof the restaurant’s number and play an automated recording once I picked up. The restaurant had no idea their number was being used.
I caught on fast enough that it was a joke. What stuck with me was how easily a kid had pulled it off. He got a stern lecture about never touching those services again. But the scammers and spammers doing this for a living are far smarter and far more sophisticated than a teenager messing around at the kitchen table.
I tell that story because the number of people we talk to who have had a device compromised in some way grows every week. The volume of spam calls, texts, and emails is climbing right along with it.
Even people who pick up a brand-new number are shocked to start getting spam almost immediately. They assume their account was breached. It wasn’t. Spammers auto-dial every number in existence whether or not it sits on a do-not-call list, whether or not they have any idea who you are or whether the line is even active. They don’t know and they don’t care. They just want someone to take the bait.
Blocking the number does not help anymore. As I learned from my son, a caller can spoof whatever number they want. They may be sitting in Los Angeles while your screen shows a local number. It might even show the number of someone you know.
To drive the point home, here is a partial list of the ways people are working to scam you right now.
Phone Call Scams:
- IRS/tax agency impersonation calls
- Social Security Administration scams
- Medicare/health insurance fraud calls
- Tech support scams (fake Microsoft, Apple, etc.)
- Extended car warranty robocalls
- Charity donation scams
- Grandparent/family emergency scams
- Romance/catfishing scams
- Debt collection scams
- Prize/lottery winner notifications
- Political donation scams
- Utility company disconnection threats
- Bank/credit card fraud alerts
- Student loan forgiveness offers
- Home security system sales
- Solar panel installation pitches
- Vacation/timeshare promotions
- Health insurance enrollment scams
- Prescription drug offers
- Business loan/grant opportunities
Text Message Scams:
- Package delivery notifications (fake FedEx, UPS, Amazon)
- Bank account alerts and verification requests
- Apple/iCloud account suspension warnings
- PayPal/Venmo payment confirmations
- Netflix/streaming service billing issues
- Two-factor authentication bypass attempts
- Refund/cashback notifications
- Free gift card offers
- Covid-related benefit scams
- Political survey/donation texts
- Fake job opportunity texts
- Cryptocurrency investment schemes
- Dating app verification scams
- Pharmacy prescription renewals
- Insurance quote requests
- Home buying/selling leads
- Loan pre-approval notifications
- Prize wheel/contest entries
- Fake news subscription offers
- Smishing (SMS phishing) for login credentials
The common thread across all of them is urgency, fear, or an offer too good to be true. Every one is engineered to slip past your thinking and trigger an immediate reaction.
So what do we actually do about it?
I’ll give you the real answer instead of the comfortable one. There is no single switch that makes this stop. Anyone who tells you their device or their app ends spam calls is selling you something. What works is a stack of defenses, each one catching what the last one missed. Build them in order, strongest first.
Layer 1: Start at your carrier
The most effective place to stop a junk call is before it ever reaches your phone. Your carrier can filter known spam numbers on their own network. AT&T calls it ActiveArmor, Verizon calls it Call Filter, T-Mobile calls it Scam Shield. In most cases you do not even need to install their app. You can switch the network-level filtering on from inside your online account. If you are on a privacy-focused MVNO, call them and ask what filtering they pass through, because it differs from one to the next. This step costs you nothing and quiets a real chunk of the noise.
Layer 2: Set up your phone
Here is where carrying a privacy phone changes the math, and it is worth understanding. On a standard Android phone, Google’s dialer is the thing labeling calls as “Spam” and screening them on your behalf. It does that by routing your calls through Google. Convenient, sure. Free in the way things are free when you are the product. When you move to a de-Googled phone like ours, you pull that surveillance pipe out of the loop, and the automatic screening leaves with it. You are trading a convenience that watches you for one you control. That trade, a little of your own effort in exchange for none of their surveillance, is the whole reason a Ghost Phone exists. So you rebuild the screening yourself, with tools that answer to you.
First, a trap to avoid. Your phone has a setting that looks like the answer and is not. It usually reads something like “Block calls from unidentified callers.” Read it closely. That only blocks calls with no caller ID at all, the ones that show as Private or Restricted. It does nothing about a random number that simply is not in your contacts, and nearly every spam call presents a number, usually a fake one. I turned that setting on myself and had a spam call ring my phone thirty seconds later. It was working exactly as designed. It just does not do what its name suggests.
The real workhorse on a de-Googled phone is a free, open-source app called SpamBlocker. I’ll be straight with you about it. It is powerful, and it is deep. It is loaded with options: filters for your contacts, for repeated calls, for numbers you have dialed, for spam databases, for custom rules, and a great deal more. It does not hold your hand. It took me real time to read through it and get it set the way I wanted, and I have done this kind of work for twenty-five years. Budget the time to learn it. Go through the settings. Test it against the way you actually use your phone, then adjust. I would rather tell you that now than have you expect to flip one switch and walk away disappointed.
One of those filters is a STIR/SHAKEN check, and it is worth knowing about because it speaks straight to the spoofing problem. STIR/SHAKEN is the telecom industry’s standard for authenticating that a call really comes from the number it claims. It is not finished and it does not catch everything yet, but it is the actual technical answer to “they faked a number I recognize,” and SpamBlocker can use it.
Once you are in the app, two setups are worth aiming for. The first is a straight whitelist: allow your contacts, block everyone else. It is the quietest option, but a legitimate first-time caller you have not saved gets stopped cold and cannot even reach voicemail. The second is the one I prefer. You set it so non-contacts do not ring but still drop into voicemail. In SpamBlocker that is the “Silence” block mode. Your phone stays quiet, the stranger lands in voicemail, and your outgoing greeting does the sorting.
Two lessons from setting it up myself. SpamBlocker has to be switched on in two places, globally and again for calls, or it will sit there doing nothing while you wonder why calls keep coming through. And once you have it configured, call yourself from a number you have not saved and check the app’s history to confirm it caught the call. Set it, then verify it. Don’t assume.
Layer 3: Cut off the supply
Everything above filters calls after they are already aimed at you. This layer is about why they are aimed at you in the first place. Your phone number is sitting in data-broker databases, tied to your name, bought and sold more times than you would believe. That is the source of the flood. Getting a new number does not fix it. You just inherit whatever baggage came with that number’s prior life.
Two moves help at the source. Keep your real number close, and hand out a separate VoIP number for anything public-facing, the kind you can burn and replace without upending your life. And get yourself removed from the broker lists. That is the only step that actually slows the inflow instead of bailing water after the boat is already taking it on.
Layer 4: Sharpen your discernment
Every layer so far is a tool, and every tool can be bypassed, spoofed, or outpaced. There is one layer that never goes out of date, and it is the one between your ears.
DISCERNMENT is the ability to perceive, understand, and judge things clearly, especially those that are not obvious or straightforward.
Some people have a sixth sense for when something is off. Most of us build it through trial and error, picking up the small tells over time. It is worth building on purpose, because no app will ever keep pace with how fast these tactics change.
In practice it comes down to a handful of habits. Slow down when someone pushes urgency on you. Legitimate organizations do not threaten you with consequences for failing to act in the next five minutes. Verify independently. If a caller claims to be your bank, hang up and call the number on the back of your card. If a text warns you about a package problem, check the carrier’s official app, not the link. If an email says your crypto account was accessed, do not click anything inside it. Go straight to your account and look for yourself. And trust your gut. If something creates panic or seems too good to be true, step back. Scammers are betting on your emotions overriding your judgment.
The goal is not to become paranoid about every message you receive. It is to make healthy skepticism and independent verification second nature.
Which brings me to the simplest habit of all, and it costs nothing. Do not pick up unless you know who is calling. Let it go to voicemail. Then record a greeting that sorts your callers for you:
“Thank you for calling. Due to the volume of spam calls I get, if I am not picking up it is because I do not have your number in my contacts or I am away from my phone. If you need to reach me and I know you, send me a text and I will get back to you as soon as I am able.”
A real person who needs you will text. A robo-dialer will not. You just filtered your callers without trusting a single app to do it for you.
Stack your defenses, then sharpen the one behind them all
In a world wired to interrupt you, the person who pauses to think before he acts has already won half the battle against digital predators. The carrier filter, the phone, the broker cleanup, they all narrow the field. Discernment is what stands when the rest gets bypassed. Build all four, and lean hardest on the one that no scammer can spoof.
Your digital sovereignty depends on it.
Stay strong. Stay vigilant. Stay free.