Nuisance calls encompass any type of unwanted, unsolicited,

telephone call A telephone call is a connection over a telephone network between the called party and the calling party. First telephone call The first telephone call was made on March 10, 1876, by Alexander Graham Bell. Bell demonstrated his ability to "ta ...

. Common types of nuisance calls include

prank call A prank call (also known as a crank call) is a telephone call intended by the caller as a practical joke played on the person answering. It is often a type of nuisance call. It can be illegal under certain circumstances. Recordings of prank pho ...

telemarketing Telemarketing (sometimes known as inside sales, or telesales in the UK and Ireland) is a method of direct marketing in which a salesperson solicits prospective customers to buy products or services, either over the phone or through a subsequen ...

calls, and silent calls.

Obscene phone call An obscene phone call is an unsolicited telephone call where a person uses foul or sexual language to interact with someone who may be known to them or who may be a complete stranger. Making obscene telephone calls for sexual arousal or other sex ...

s and other threatening calls are criminal acts in most jurisdictions, particularly when hate crime is involved. Unsolicited calls may also be used to initiate

telephone fraud Phone fraud, or more generally communications fraud, is the use of telecommunications products or services with the intention of illegally acquiring money from, or failing to pay, a telecommunication company or its customers. Many operators hav ...

Fax machine Fax (short for facsimile), sometimes called telecopying or telefax (the latter short for telefacsimile), is the telephonic transmission of scanned printed material (both text and images), normally to a telephone number connected to a printer o ...

s may also receive

junk fax Junk faxes are a form of telemarketing where unsolicited advertisements are sent via fax transmission. Junk faxes are the faxed equivalent of spam or junk mail. Proponents of this advertising medium often use the terms ''broadcast fax'' or ''fax a ...

es via unsolicited calls.

Caller ID Caller identification (Caller ID) is a telephone service, available in analog and digital telephone systems, including voice over IP (VoIP), that transmits a caller's telephone number to the called party's telephone equipment when the call i ...

provides some protection against unwanted calls, but can still be turned off by the calling party. Even where end-user Caller ID is not available, calls are still logged, both in billing records at the originating telco and via

automatic number identification Automatic number identification (ANI) is a feature of a telecommunications network for automatically determining the origination telephone number on toll calls for billing purposes. Automatic number identification was originally created by the A ...

, so the perpetrator's phone number can still be discovered in many cases. However, these do not provide complete protection: harassers can use payphones and, in some cases, caller ID (but not necessarily automatic number identification itself) can be spoofed or blocked. Mobile telephone abusers can (at some cost) use "throwaway" mobile phones or SIMs.

Voice over IP Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), also called IP telephony, is a method and group of technologies for the delivery of voice communications and multimedia sessions over Internet Protocol (IP) networks, such as the Internet. The terms Internet t ...

users may send bogus caller ID or route calls through servers in multiple countries. Even in these cases, with sufficient law enforcement and telco effort, persistent abusers can often be tracked down by technical means.

Call screening Call screening is the process of evaluating the characteristics of a telephone call before deciding how or whether to answer it. Some methods may include: * listening to the message being recorded on an answering machine or voice mail. * checki ...

is another countermeasure against unsolicited calls. Most telephone companies have a department devoted to handling complaints regarding unsolicited phone calls. In criminal cases such as obscene or threatening phone calls, many police departments have dedicated resources devoted to dealing with such cases. In the United Kingdom the communication regulator Ofcom offers a service to report on silent calls while the

Telephone Preference Service The Telephone Preference Service (TPS) is a UK register of domestic telephone numbers whose users have indicated that they do not wish to receive sales and marketing telephone calls. Registration is free of charge. The service is paid for by the dir ...

(TPS) allows consumer to register on a do-not-call-list for marketing calls. On December 19, 2018, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) announced that beginning December 19, 2019, phone providers will be required to impose universal, network-level filtering of all calls that " urportto originate from telephone numbers that do not conform to established numbering plans".

References

Telephone crimes Teletraffic {{law-enforcement-stub

See also

References