Robo-Diallers

A robo-dialler (also referred to as auto-dialler) is an electronic device or software that automatically dials telephone numbers. Once the call has been answered, the robo-dialler either plays a recorded message or connects the call to a live person.

How they affect our clients?

Due to the automated nature of their spamming technique they go through number ranges sequentially trying to contact consumers to sell their business to. When you have a call tracking system with 100’s of numbers you would notice this far more than if you just had one number. Robo-diallers affect numbers in all countries, but are more prevalent in the UK and US. In the US Toll free traffic pumping has become a growing problem within the telecom industry.

What is being done to stop them?

In the UK, the Government have an action plan for tackling nuisance calls which emerged from ongoing work with Which?, the ICO and Ofcom. This has meant that these sorts of techniques are no longer allowed to be carried out in the UK and we are seeing these businesses pop up in other countries outside of our legislation, most often in India, where the UK law is not enforced. This issue has been widely discussed in the media as it was discussed in the House of Commons.

In the US, the Internet Crime Complaint Center, which is a partnership between the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the National White Collar Crime Center (NW3C) have a task force who investigate all internet crime complaints. If you feel that you have been targeted, please report this to your telecoms provider and file a complaint here.

What is Infinity doing to help reduce the impact?

• Randomised pools to reduce impact from robo-diallers calling sequential block of numbers
• Number type flexibility - We find that they typically target geographical and freephone numbers in the UK and Toll-Free numbers in the US so we can change your number type to either 03 or Lo-call in the UK or Toll numbers in the US.
• We currently offer the following Spam Avoidance Features:
  • Platform Wide Alerts & Blocking
  • Self Service Nuisance Call Blocking
  • Nuisance Caller IVR
  • Anonymous caller Nuisance Caller IVR
  • Spam call hang up
• We have the following Spam Avoidance Features planned for the future:
  • Soft Block Subscription
  • Wrong Number Call Rating

What are the financial implications of Spam Calls?

Once calls are identified as spam Infinity will remove the charges relating to those calls from your monthly billing, including cost per call and call charges. Also, any calls from any Caller IDs that have been blocked will never reach the platform in the future therefore they will not generate any costs.

Further Information

If you’re fed up of receiving these calls, there are a range of options available to help you stop or reduce the number of nuisance calls you receive. Please contact our Support Team