This Phone Will Tell You If a Scammer Is Calling

Published

May 11, 2020

Brooke Niemeyer is the former Deputy Managing Editor – Syndication for Credit.com. She writes about a variety of personal finance topics, with work featured on ABC, CBS, TIME, The Huffington Post, MSN, FOX Business, Business Insider, Yahoo Finance and other publications. She has a Master’s degree in Journalism from New York University and was a reporter for NBC before joining the Credit.com team. You can follow her at @RNYBrooke.

If your phone rings and it’s a number you don’t recognize, do you answer? And, if you do, how often do you regret it once you realize it’s a scammer on the other end of the line?

Well, if you have a Google Android phone, you might be able to avoid that hassle in the future.

Google recently announced its Google Phone app for Nexus and Android One will start warning users about calls that are suspected to be from a spam caller. From there, users can block and/or report any of these unwanted callers to help raise community awareness.

It’s important to note that to use the caller ID and spam protection feature, you may have to give Google access to information about your phone calls, the Nexus support page says.

Advice for Avoiding Phone Fraud

The Better Business Bureau encourages consumers to be smart about spam phone calls and offers the following advice.

Don’t rely on caller ID alone. It’s easy to make calls look like they’re coming from a familiar number or area code, or even from your phone number.
If you get a call from a number you don’t recognize, be sure to look it up online before you return the call.
Be skeptical if anyone who calls wants you to wire money, give access to your computer, or anything else of this nature.

What Else You Can Do

Even if your phone has the option for the new Google spam warnings, it is not a foolproof solution to preventing these callers from contacting you or scams from happening. If you think you may have been a victim of a scam, make sure you’re frequently checking your financial accounts and credit for any indications that something is wrong.

Look for signs of a problem — like unauthorized transactions, unfamiliar credit report entries and sudden changes in your credit scores — and address them immediately. You can review your credit by taking a look at your free credit report summary, updated every 14 days, on Credit.com.

Image: Georgijevic