do not pick up calls from numbers I do not know

The phone rings, you look at the screen and pick it up thinking “who is it?” or worse yet “let’s see if it’s the electrician.” What you receive on the other side is a recorded voiceover, silence for response or perhaps a person willing to sell you something you don’t need. You hang up. Nothing would happen if it weren’t for the fact that the same thing happened to you the day before yesterday. And last week. So one day I made a decision: I would only take the call if I knew who was on the other end.

For great evils, great remedies. This decision came after years of enduring unwanted calls and trying everything. Yes, I’m in the Robinson list and I also signed up for the list Stop Advertising the same day I discovered its existence. For trying, let it not be.

The problem is that although they work, They are not infallible: If the company that is going to launch the advertising campaign in question doesn’t even look at it, you’re in the clear. Or if you hire a third party that uses unreliable databases. Or if directly, they don’t care: these lists are subscription services to which the company may not be signed up because it costs them to assume the risk.

But there is already legislation against spam. Have them, haylas and without going any further, now there are prefixes that serve as an alert or established schedules. However, the reality is that although you may receive some less, you continue to receive them because well, once the law is done, the trap is done: many companies find loopholes through which to sneak in, some as simple as outsource the service to a foreign companywhere state law does not apply. Or that the service in question is considered “of public interest.” Or because you have unsubscribed and they can pick you up.

Or the most common and that falls on the consumer’s side: because we have authorized it at some point. That damn check you marked without reading. Yes, it is true that technically you could dedicate yourself to searching and searching among the services you have contracted to deactivate that option (without going any further, I did it with Vodafone and Penélope Seguros), but it involves thinking about what services you have, going to the apps, searching through the menus and marking while crossing your fingers so that you don’t leave anything out.

Deactivating that option in Vodafone, the telecom company of which I am a customer

Bombing and security. It is true that taking a call in isolation is not that big of a deal. It is not the first time that the typical demoscopy service has called me and I spend a quarter of an hour answering. The problem is when a company calls you several times in a short period of time. And not just one company, because this siege operation can be followed by several corporations. They call, you answer and another operator from the same company calls again to offer the same thing a few days later.

But there are two potential cases that are worse: that you answer “yes”, that short and innocent word is recorded and then it is used to sign you up for services, such as the police warned a couple of years ago. Given this possibility, you can consider the option of remaining silent, but not even then: if a telemarketing company uses auto dialing softwarewhen you pick up the system, it registers the answered call event and your number is marked in its database as active, as told by cybersecurity expert and head of Cybersecurity at GMV Paula González in Damn.

Isn’t it killing flies with cannon shots? Maybe when faced with this decision not to answer calls from unknown numbers, someone will throw their hands up thinking about the calls you miss: that call from the doctor, the electrician who never arrives, or from a delivery person. The reality is that it has not come alone: ​​Google It has a great call filter. on Android and in my case, as an iPhone user, I have found my best ally in the live voicemail function of iOS 26 with the option to request a reason.

When a call comes in from an unknown number, the phone asks you to explain the reason for the call from the beginning. And here it depends on who is calling: when the call is blatant spam, they usually don’t leave a message and if they do, they will never receive my response. If you have any interest (for example a delivery person), leave me a message. Being a live mailbox, I can even pick up the call instantly, when the call is no longer unknown.

In Xataka | Apple introduced the SPAM call filter as the star feature of iOS 26. It took me a week to deactivate it

In Xataka | If you are tired of receiving spam calls every day, good news: MasOrange is tired too

Cover | Ivan Linares