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AT&T is the first major carrier to make the move to automatically block fraudulent calls, aka those pesky robocalls that you get and ignore a thousand times a day. Back in June, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ruled that carriers could block robocalls from their customers by default, without requiring the customers to opt-in or sign up for the service. Now, AT&T is following through on the ruling, enabling its Call Protect service by default for new and existing lines.
AT&T’S Call Protect service does three things:
- Detects and blocks fraudulent calls entirely
- Flags telemarketers and spam calls as “Suspected Spam”
- Allows users to maintain a personal block list to specifically block individual numbers
For some time now, the service has been around (and available for free) for postpaid AT&T customers, but the catch has been that you’d have to download an app and actively enable it on your account. Now, with the new FCC’s ruling, AT&T can activate it for you, although you can still manually activate it if you already have AT&T and don’t want to wait for the service. For those who’d rather receive all of their calls, unfiltered, AT&T will still allow users to opt out of Call Protect like before; it’s only the default behavior that’s changing.
AT&T is the first major U.S. carrier to enable free call blocking for all of its customers in the wake of the FCC ruling. Competing wireless provider, T-Mobile offers similar features, but only its ScamID service is enabled by default. T-Mobile customers still have to enable its Scam Block feature manually, and the Name ID service that identifies numbers still costs extra. Similarly, Verizon’s Call Filter service needs to be enabled manually, even for the free version, while Sprint’s Premium Caller ID service costs extra and likely won’t be enabled for free anytime soon.
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