▷ They call me, say goodbye and hang up: this is how roboballs are

“They call my personal number and after picking up the call a woman with a Latin American accent says goodbye to me. Then they hang up on me ”. At Tuexpertomovil.com we have received many comments in our series of spam articles mentioning this increasingly common practice. Called robocalls, this type of practice does not pose any danger to the billing of the main telephone line, and its purpose may vary depending on the company that makes the call.

What are Robocalls and why do they say goodbye and hang up

As the name itself indicates, robocalls are defined as a method used by Call Center companies to make massive calls through automated or 'robotized' systems.

In telephone operators, such as Orange, Vodafone, Jazztel or Movistar, this type of practice is very common when carrying out advertising campaigns. Roughly speaking, the system executes dozens of calls every minute based on a previously registered list of numbers. Once they are answered by the recipients, the operators answer the call to make offers and announce promotions.

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This is precisely one of the reasons why some of the calls are not answered by the operators: when the number of available operators exceeds the number of answered calls, those responsible remain silent until they are released from their duties. So how do you explain that a recording that says goodbye is heard ?

For some time now, some companies are optimizing their advertising campaigns using this method. Apparently, the system makes thousands of calls simultaneously to check the availability of those numbers with which the database operates. Next, the same system records those lines that have picked up the call and the reception time to later create call schedules.

The reason why goodbye recording is used is still unknown, although everything indicates that it is an automated recording that the robocall systems integrate by default. It should also be added that this system is not limited to traditional telephone operators. Often used by criminal organizations to commit phone scams, such as the famous Microsoft service call.

Is there a way to avoid robocalls?

The truth is, yes. Perhaps the most effective measure is to register on the Lista Robinson website, a platform managed by the AEED (Spanish Association of Digital Economy) that is in charge of urging all Spanish companies to suspend commercial or advertising calls.

The process is as simple as registering our personal data (name, surname, email address) in and then adding all the phone numbers where we want to stop receiving commercial calls. In a period of between four weeks to a month and a half or two months we will stop receiving calls of this type.

However, there are companies that skip the European Data Protection Law. In this case, the only way to stop telephone harassment by companies is based on using applications to block calls if we have a phone with Android or iOS as the operating system.

While there are some layers of customization that already have these types of features, the best way to stop spam calls is to use third-party applications. There are many applications, although the ones we recommend from Tuexpertomovil.com are Mr. Number if we have an iPhone or True Caller if we have an Android phone.

Once we have installed the application on the phone, it will be enough to add the number that we want to block to the black list and activate the call filter. The latter will automatically detect all the numbers that have been registered by other users as 'spam numbers' or 'annoying numbers' and will block them without the need for manual intervention.

Can we block calls if we have a landline phone? Certainly yes, although this feature is only available on some models. The Motorola FW200I is one of them. Its price, yes, is 42 euros. The Panasonic KX-TGK210, a cheaper model (about 30 euros), also has a built-in caller ID with call blocking function.

The last method we can use is based on accessing the different pages of the operators to remove our phone number from the databases of their associated commercial services.

At Vodafone, for example, we can access this page. If the person responsible for the call is Jazztel, we will have to call the number 1565 and specify it personally. In the case of Orange we can process it through this page. At MásMóvil we can contact you directly through the operator's official Twitter account (@masmovil).

List of spam numbers identified by Tuexpertomovil.com