Are scam calls blowing up your phone? Here's how to limit them – Gulf Coast News and Weather

Scammers are constantly trying to steal your information. Fort Myers resident Kishawn Morton expressed frustration over the constant interruptions.
“It is very frustrating, especially if you’re working, you’re doing different things or, you know, having personal time with your family, and your phone’s constantly going off,” Morton said.
Morton shared a personal experience involving his mother, who was targeted by a scam when she sought assistance with Apple online. “My mom, she needed to have something with Apple, and she went online, and it was a scam call number that was provided. So she contacted me and I said, ‘Hey Mom, that’s a scam,'” Morton said.
To help combat these issues, AT&T has introduced a new app called ActiveArmor. Henry Nguyen, director of sales at AT&T, explained the app’s functionality: “ActiveArmor is the application on your phone that engages your device to protect you from those calls, and it will notify you if it’s a spam caller or threat. It gives you that extra alert to making sure that you’re ready and that you don’t respond right away.”
Once downloaded and activated, the app operates in the background, requiring no further action from users. “It’s an application that sits in the background, and it vets those calls and it vets those text messages,” Nguyen said.
Morton noted that while the app does not completely eliminate spam calls, it significantly reduces their frequency. “It does, doesn’t cut it completely, but it does lower the amount of calls that you’re receiving. I will say cut it in half,” Morton said.
For families, Morton emphasized the importance of additional protections for children, such as screen time monitoring. “So with screen time, you can go ahead and monitor, restrict and block a lot of things so your kids are not receiving calls from other people,” Morton said.
As the holiday season approaches, Nguyen advised consumers to be aware of available protections and exercise caution when purchasing new devices. “First step, making sure that you’re blocking it. Second, make sure that you report it. And third, making sure that you notify whether it’s a bank or that business that’s trying to reach out to you, make sure they’re aware that someone’s trying to impersonate them,” Nguyen said.
Other carriers offer similar solutions, such as Verizon’s Call Filter and T-Mobile’s Scam Shield. The most effective strategy to prevent scams and robocalls is to avoid answering unknown numbers, as doing so can increase the likelihood of receiving more unwanted calls.
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