TECH TALK

Remember the good old days when telephone calls primarily came from people you knew? At this point, most of us would settle for phone calls from real people.

Unfortunately, robot calls from political campaigns, debt collectors, and charities are all legal.

What are illegal are the calls from fake IRS agents, companies which claim that you’ve won a free Bahamas vacation, or want to sell you medical alert systems.

How can you cut down on robocalls? The FCC says to follow these guidelines:

• Don’t answer calls from numbers you don’t know.

• Don’t answer calls from blocked or unknown numbers.

• If someone calls claiming to be from a company, hang up and call the company from a phone number on the company website or a recent billing statement.

• If you answer the phone and a recording asks, “Hello can you hear me?” or if the call prompts you to push a button to reach a real person, hang up. If you respond, that lets the scammer know your number is real and will prompt them to sell it to other scammers.

Many carriers have services to help cut down on robocalls. AT&T, Verizon, and Google Fi all have options or apps which flag suspected spam callers before you answer the phone.

If your carrier doesn’t offer a service like that, Hiya is a free third-party app which works on both Android and iOS. You can learn more about Hiya here: https://hiya.com/