Savvy Senior: How to protect seniors from scam calls

Dear Savvy Senior: What tools can you recommend to help protect seniors from scam calls? My 74-year-old mother gets tons of unwanted telemarketing and robocalls and has been duped out of hundreds of dollars. — Frustrated Daughter

Dear Frustrated: Scammers are always looking for new ways to trick people out of money, and in the U.S., phone calls remain the primary way swindlers hook older victims.

The Federal Trade Commission recently found that 24 percent of adults over age 60 who reported losing money to a scam in 2021 said it started with a phone call — the largest percentage of any method, including email, text and mail.

To help protect your mom, here are some tips and tools to employ.

If your mom hasn’t already done so, a good first step in limiting at least some unwanted calls is to make sure her home and cellphone numbers are registered with the national Do Not Call registry. While this won’t stop fraudulent scam calls, it will stop unwanted calls from legitimate businesses who are trying to sell her something. To sign up, call 888-382-1222 from the phone number you want to register, or you can do it online at DoNotCall.gov.

Cellphone protection

Most wireless providers offer good tools for stopping scam calls and texts. For example, AT&T has the ActiveArmor Mobile Security app; Verizon provides the Call Filter app; and T-Mobile offers the Scam Shield app.

To activate these tools, download the spam-blocking app from your mom’s carrier via the app store on her phone. These apps are free to use, but most carriers will also offer upgraded services that you can get for a small monthly fee.

If your mom uses a regional or small wireless carrier that doesn’t offer scam/robocall protection, you can use a free third-party app. Truecaller (Truecaller.com), Call Control (CallControl.com), Hiya (Hiya.com) and YouMail (YouMail.com) are all good options to consider.

Built-in call blockers

Many smartphones also offer built-in tools that can block spam calls. If your mom uses a newer iPhone (iOS 13 or later), she can silence all unknown callers who aren’t in her contacts list in the phone’s settings.

Silencing all unknown callers is an extreme solution that will definitely stop all unwanted calls, but your mom will also miss some legitimate calls. However, unknown callers do have the option to leave a voice message, and their calls will appear in her recent calls list. She can add any number to her contact list to let them through in the future.

If your mom owns a new Android phone, she can also block spam calls in the phone’s settings. Or, if she owns a Samsung Galaxy phone, she can use Smart Call, which flags suspected spam calls and allows her to block and report them.

She can also manually block specific reoccurring spam call numbers on iPhones and Android.

Landline protection

To stop scam calls on your mom’s home phone, set up the anonymous call rejection option. This is a free feature available from most telephone companies; however, some may charge a fee. It lets you screen out calls from callers who have blocked their caller ID information — a favorite tactic of telemarketers. To set it up, you usually have to dial *77 from your landline, though different phone services may have different procedures.

Call your mom’s telephone service provider to find out if they offer this tool, and if so, what you need to do to enable it. If they don’t offer it, find out what other call blocking options they offer.

Send your senior questions to: Savvy Senior, P.O. Box 5443, Norman, OK 73070, or visit SavvySenior.org.