Nuisance calls encompass any type of unwanted, unsolicited,

telephone call A telephone call is a connection over a telephone network between the called party and the calling party. First telephone call The first telephone call was made on March 10, 1876, by Alexander Graham Bell. Bell demonstrated his ability to "ta ...

. Common types of nuisance calls include prank calls, telemarketing calls, and silent calls. Obscene phone calls and other threatening calls are criminal acts in most jurisdictions, particularly when

hate crime A hate crime (also known as a bias-motivated crime or bias crime) is a prejudice-motivated crime which occurs when a perpetrator targets a victim because of their membership (or perceived membership) of a certain social group or racial demograph ...

is involved. Unsolicited calls may also be used to initiate telephone frauds. Fax machines may also receive

junk fax Junk faxes are a form of telemarketing where unsolicited advertisements are sent via fax transmission. Junk faxes are the faxed equivalent of spam or junk mail. Proponents of this advertising medium often use the terms ''broadcast fax'' or ''fax a ...

es via unsolicited calls. Caller ID provides some protection against unwanted calls, but can still be turned off by the calling party. Even where end-user Caller ID is not available, calls are still logged, both in billing records at the originating telco and via automatic number identification, so the perpetrator's phone number can still be discovered in many cases. However, these do not provide complete protection: harassers can use payphones and, in some cases, caller ID (but not necessarily automatic number identification itself) can be spoofed or blocked. Mobile telephone abusers can (at some cost) use "throwaway" mobile phones or SIMs.

Voice over IP Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), also called IP telephony, is a method and group of technologies for the delivery of voice communications and multimedia sessions over Internet Protocol (IP) networks, such as the Internet. The terms Internet t ...

users may send bogus caller ID or route calls through servers in multiple countries. Even in these cases, with sufficient law enforcement and telco effort, persistent abusers can often be tracked down by technical means. Call screening is another countermeasure against unsolicited calls. Most telephone companies have a department devoted to handling complaints regarding unsolicited phone calls. In criminal cases such as obscene or threatening phone calls, many police departments have dedicated resources devoted to dealing with such cases. In the United Kingdom the communication regulator

Ofcom The Office of Communications, commonly known as Ofcom, is the government-approved regulatory and competition authority for the broadcasting, telecommunications and postal industries of the United Kingdom. Ofcom has wide-ranging powers acros ...

offers a service to report on silent calls while the Telephone Preference Service (TPS) allows consumer to register on a do-not-call-list for marketing calls. On December 19, 2018, the

Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC; french: Conseil de la radiodiffusion et des télécommunications canadiennes, links=) is a public organization in Canada with mandate as a regulatory agency for broadcast ...

(CRTC) announced that beginning December 19, 2019, phone providers will be required to impose universal, network-level filtering of all calls that " urportto originate from telephone numbers that do not conform to established numbering plans".

References

Telephone crimes Teletraffic {{law-enforcement-stub

See also

References