T-Mobile, began rolling out Scam ID and Scam Block to customers today to safeguard them from scam calls, which cost Americans millions of dollars every year. With Scam ID, customers are automatically alerted when an incoming call is likely a scam.
And, when customers enable Scam Block, T-Mobile will stop scam calls before they ever reach them. These free new customer protection features are powered by patent-pending T-Mobile technology built right into the Un-carrier’s advanced network – which also means scam blocking works on every single phone on T-Mobile’s network.
Phone scams come in all shapes and sizes, from the IRS scam to Medicare cons to “free” travel to credit card scams and countless others. These phone scams are run by fraudsters who are often armed with robocalling technology enabling them to target vast numbers of people and make tens of thousands of calls a minute with the sole purpose of cheating people and separating them from their money.
“Every year, three out of four people in the US get at least one scam call—and fraudsters cheat consumers out of more than half a billion dollars per year! It’s insane – so we had to do something to protect our customers!” said Neville Ray, chief technology officer for T-Mobile.
“So the T-Mobile team designed a brilliant set of patent-pending technologies — then built them directly into our network, so there’s nothing customers have to do. No hoops to jump through, no app to download. Like most T-Mobile technologies, it just works.”
Here’s how it all works: every time someone calls a T-Mobile customer, as soon as that call reaches the T-Mobile network, patent-pending technology analyses it – in milliseconds – against an advanced global database of tens of thousands of known scammer numbers.
The database is kept up-to-date in near real-time by analysing every call that comes into the network with behavioral heuristics and intelligent scam pattern detection. When a match is found, the T-Mobile network tags the incoming call and warns the customer that it’s likely from a scammer. Because of the way T-Mobile’s network manages voice traffic, the Un-carrier is capable of analysing every call to identify and block scammers.
If a customer prefers never to be bothered by scam calls, they can simply turn on Scam Block, and T-Mobile will terminate the call before it ever reaches the customer – stopping the scammers cold. The customer is always in control and always has the power to decline or block scam calls.
T-Mobile is enabling Scam ID and Scam Block on a rolling basis beginning with T-Mobile ONE customers. New T-Mobile ONE customers will automatically get Scam ID beginning April 5. T-Mobile postpaid customers can also enable Scam ID for themselves beginning April 5 by dialing #ONI# (#664#) and pressing the call button in their phone’s dialer. To turn on Scam Block, customers can dial #ONB# (#662#) or, to turn it off, dial #OFB# (#632#). To check whether Scam Block is on or off, customers can dial #STS# (#787#).
T-Mobile is part of an industry-wide effort to fight robocalling, led by Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairman Ajit Pai. Scam ID and Scam Block stop robocalls for T-Mobile customers in their most insidious form – phone scams.
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