We have been listening for years that commercial calls end. The problem is that they never end

Next June 7 Mobile use will be prohibited to make commercial calls. From that moment “they will have to be done from a prefix from a province or from an 800 or 900 number,” said the Minister for Digital Transformation and Public Function, Óscar López.

It is an important news in the fight against telephone spam, but the problem is that it is not enough, and most likely we continue to receive these types of annoying calls.

Eternal fight against unwanted commercial calls

In June 2023 It entered into force he last change of the General Telecommunications Law (LGT) that establishes that we cannot receive commercial calls without prior consent. However, Made the law, made the trapbecause the problem is that they can continue calling us if previously We gave our consent.

The question is, did we give it? The truth is that yes, because a good part of these communications we have authorized when hiring various services, opening accounts on the Internet or filling business forms. In these documents there are usually clauses that we implicitly accept when leaving our data.

According to the modification of the LGT, there are two exceptions that allow companies to make calls to users:

1. If we have expressed prior consent in the contract: The normal thing is that we have granted it without realizing it. In many cases we even authorize third companies to call us if they are related to the contracted services.
2. If the company has a legitimate interest in communication: that “legitimate interest“For example, in the case of calls to improve the service and offer discounts. In those cases they are not considered unwanted communications.

Both exceptions are reasonable, but in practice companies are using them abusive. The new reform that will enter into force this Saturday, June 7, was announced months ago.

It does not completely solve that problem, even if it mitigates it. There will be no commercialized calls made from mobile phones, but calls with international origin will be blocked, another method that advertisers They took the opportunity to continue “frondo” To users to unwanted commercial calls.

The previous consent will have an expiration date

Even more striking is the fact that the traditional “trap” that companies had used may no longer have indefinite validity. Thus, the previous consent we had granted will have a two -year “expiration”. From that moment It must be renewed.

In this new reform of the regulations there are two other interesting measures that can help mitigate the problem a little more:

1. Nullity of contracts: If we receive an unwanted commercial call and sign a contract for that call, said contract will be considered null and we can request your nullity.
2. Registration of senders: As operators will maintain a record of authorized numbers for commercial calls: if the sender is not registered in the registry, the calls will be blocked.

These measures may not eliminate the problem completely, but it is reasonable to think that they will reduce the number and frequency of unwanted commercial calls.

We will continue to receive commercial calls

The reforms of the General Telecommunications Law leave the doors open to companies can continue to contact users. To start and as we said, they can only do it from a prefix of a province OA through numbers 800 and 900.

But in addition to the calls we receive from such numbers for having given prior consent, there are two others:

1. Operators: The law establishes a period of up to 12 months since the decline of a telephone company is caused so that those responsible can make calls in order to retain or bring the client back.
2. Fraud and scams: It is something that companies fail to stop and continue to suffer. Through Spoofing ‘techniques They manage to falsify the sending of messages and calls to deceive users. The government has been raising solutions In this regard, but for the moment the problem persists.

Many measures, no definitive

The condemnation of commercial calls (whether real or scams) is limited, but seems difficult to eliminate it completely in the short term. The reforms that the government has been carrying out for two years have contributed to limiting the ways in which companies take advantage of this resource, and the end of commercial calls from mobile number is a good sample of this.

However, there will continue to exceptions in them we will continue to receive commercial calls. The Robinson list It will continue to be another of the tools to try to avoid those spam calls, but there will undoubtedly other others such as Google call filter or a new alternative called Stop Advertising.

All of them contribute to mitigate one of the big problems for mobile users. One that will be difficult to disappear at all, but to which little by little they are putting more and more obstacles.

And meanwhile, a last resort: We can always report. The Spanish data protection agency puts at our disposal A form with which make a formal claim When we detect unwanted commercial calls that violate the law.

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