Rick’s Tech Tips Newsletter
Question from Rhonda: My cell service is from T-Mobile and they label calls they think might be from scammers as “Scam Likely”.
I get several of these “Scam Likely” calls a day and I’ve been just ignoring them.
But the other day I got a call from my friend (who lives out of state) and it mistakenly labeled her call as “Scam Likely”.
I didn’t answer it because I never answer those calls. I didn’t find out till later that she had tried to call me.
My question is how reliable are those labels in general?
I’m concerned that I might have missed some important calls in the past because I thought they were scammers.
Rick’s answer: Rhonda, the short answer to your question is “very reliable”.
T-Mobile and the other carriers actually do a pretty good job at accurately recognizing scam/spam calls and labeling them as such, and those labels have saved a lot of frustration for a lot of people.
The above being said, the spam-detection algorithms the carriers use aren’t perfect, and on occasion a legitimate call will get marked as a scam/spam (as you now well know).
You can actually help T-Mobile improve the accuracy of their spam detection algorithm by reporting the mislabeled phone number as being mislabeled as a scammer’s number. Just fill out the form on this page.
Bottom line: The mobile carriers generally do a good job at recognizing scam/spam calls and labeling them as such.
But as you recently found out, they do occasionally make mistakes.