YouMail is now more aggressively blocking spam calls.
This change is driven by telemarketing calls increasing 33% over the past year and our seeing more and more complaints about telemarketing.
What YouMail Blocks Now
Traditionally, we blocked phone numbers making unlawful calls. That is, phone numbers that:
- Commit fraud, like impersonating a major financial institution or spoofing a caller ID. This is a no brainer, as no one wants to be defrauded.
- Violate a regulation, such as the telemarketing sales rule. This is also a no brainer, since callers that are not following the law should actually be paying fines rather than profiting from getting through.
We also blocked phone numbers with lots of user complaints relative to the volume of calls from those numbers. It turns out that’s a pretty good proxy for something bad going on.
That still leaves too many unwanted calls getting through, especially to our free users.
How YouMail Is Changing
We’re expanding what we consider spam. Now we’re also blocking classes of calls that users are telling us they don’t want, even if they’re technically “legal”.
Specifically, YouMail now considers a phone number to be spam if we see any of these behaviors:
- Hanging up. We now block any number that does not leave voicemails, other than consumers calling consumers. That’s not a legal requirement. But you know what? It’s a consumer requirement. Nobody wants to deal with callers who hang up and make us wonder who called and why and what to do next. So phone numbers that don’t leave voicemails no longer ring.
- Using many different numbers. We now block any caller that isn’t limiting its calls to a small set of numbers. Again, that’s not a legal requirement. But why exactly is a company doing that? Because they don’t want to be blocked or ignored and are trying to sneak through. Too bad. Any company doing this will now have all of their calls blocked. (Yes, we know there are exceptions like a national pharmacy chain calling from a local number – we’ll make sure those get through.)
- Calling repeatedly. Some companies call the same person over and over. There are some legal limitations around calling to collect a debt, but other than that, there aren’t a lot of restrictions on how many times a company can call you. But think about it this way. What if someone you know called you 10 times a day? You’d say they’re stalking you. So we simply don’t let stalkers through, whether it’s a person or a company.
- Getting complaints about lack of consent. There are legal rules about when consent is needed. But they are complicated. Users may give consent legally but accidentally or be unable to figure out how to undo that consent. So to keep things simple, if users are complaining about consent, we’re going to block those numbers.
What Calls Get Through
Legally, telemarketers can be jerks. But consumers don’t have to let jerks ring their phone. Said another way: to get through to YouMail users – or our partners – callers need to not be jerks. This means following a few simple rules:
- Behave lawfully and don’t impersonate others.
- Leave voicemails when no one answers.
- Call from a small set of numbers, even just one.
- Give people a break between calls.
- Ensure users actually know they gave consent.
Not that hard, right? Callers just need to be polite, respectful, and treat others like they want to be treated. The first grade playground rules win again.
These simple rules are what leads to a good consumer experience.
And they will cause YouMail to block far more calls. Yet, we expect there will be very few complaints from consumers about this increased blocking. Any maybe, just maybe, consumers will start to be respected more by those that want to talk to them.
