Protecting your privacy: How to block robocalls

DETROIT (WXYZ) — If you’re tired of spam phone calls, robocalls and telemarketers, there's bad news for 2019: experts expect even more robocalls in 2019.

RELATED LINKS

• Resource guide to protecting your privacy online
• Protecting your privacy: Recent data breaches you need to know
• Protecting your privacy: Top WXYZ stories to help you stay informed

First Orion, a call protection company, predicts half of all mobile phone calls will be spam robocalls in 2019.

“I already get them a couple times a week,” said Mark Royzenblat. “Lately, they’ve gotten to the point where they actually start to sound real.”

One website estimates that as many as 6 million robocalls are going out per hour — that’s a lot of junk phone calls. If you can’t avoid them the next best thing is to ignore them, and thanks to technology there are more and more options to do just that.

In the past you had to block individual numbers, but like most tech solutions — there’s an app for that. In this case, there’s several:

HIYA

A spin-off from the White Pages, HIYA is a free app that can be customized to your needs. You can set up HIYA, once you’ve downloaded it, to let you know if an incoming call is from a known scammer, telemarketer, etc. based on it’s list of numbers flagged by other HIYA members. You can even customize it to send specific calls straight to voicemail.

PAY APPS

Two other apps that will help cutdown on robocalls are NoMoRobo and RoboKiller. Both will have a small monthly fee, but if you prefer to pay for the service rather than get a free app both are well-recognized for their effectiveness

ASK GOOGLE

In the old days if you didn’t know something you’d “ask Google,” but these days they’re doing more than providing search engines at Google. New Google phones are equipped with Google Assistant which has call blocking features that make life easier without the use of an app.