Apps to avoid annoying calls

To avoid cold-callers, marketers, that random acquaintance pestering you for a loan, check out the following apps.

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Carrying your phone with you at all times means you are susceptible to all sorts of people calling you at odd hours. To avoid cold-callers, marketers, that random acquaintance pestering you for a loan, or your annoying ex-girl/boyfriend, check out the following apps.

Mr. Number The app is one of the many call-blocker apps available in the market today. While it provides you all the features of a regular call-blocker app (i.e. blocking calls and texts from certain numbers, area codes or code prefixes), it also has a great reverse call lookup feature. You can also block suspected spam until further notice, and while blocking a specific area code, can create exceptions as well. You can also choose the way a call is blocked — dump all calls from a particular number to voicemail or do not let the number connect at all. You can also choose to receive silent alerts when calls are blocked, or, in the case of most spam calls, do not get alerts at all. One major minus point is too much aggressive advertising and a limited number (20) of free lookups, after which they will cost you.

Truecaller

A very popular app, Truecaller is crowd-sourced. Truecaller, unfortunately, does not completely block your calls. In the sense, your phone will ring at least once, before Truecaller cuts it. There is a single block list where you can continue adding numbers. Truecaller will alert you when it is a spam call (if a few other people have also flagged it as such). Also, even though the feature apparently exists, if a blocked number sends you a text, this reviewer was not able to view the log later on,

(plus, as Truecaller, in a response to this review, said: Android 4.4 has a general limitation on the text blocking feature for any third party developers therefore it's not unique to Truecaller). Word of caution, though – because Truecaller is crowd-sourced and social, it is very easy for someone to locate you and get your personal details off social media through just your phone number. Someone on Secret (that funny, anonymous, vexatious app) was gullible enough to hand me their phone number. I searched for their number on Truecaller and, within 5 minutes, had located said gullible person on Facebook and was in the know of their life story a la social media.

(Truecaller has responded to the above review: The block function is working differently on iPhone compared to Android due to limitations on Apple’s platform. We cannot completely reject the call on iPhone but we do the best by warning our users about Top spammers which is being updated once a week. This is not a problem unique to Truecaller.Truecaller is completely a permission based service. Users cannot get a number from Truecaller unless the owner gives permission. By default, non-public numbers are shown as ‘private.’ A contact request must be sent to the number owner in order for any exchange of information to take place. This means that the number owner has full control of who can receive their number.)

Call Blocker — Blacklist App Blacklist (formerly Call Control) is another good one that contains a registry of user-submitted spam numbers that you can block. Apart from all the usual features, Blacklist comes with a Do Not Disturb mode and scheduling feature that lets you play around with who you want to talk to and when. The app also has ties with the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) Do Not Call Registry (not particularly helpful in India, but a handy little point if you decide to visit the U.S.). Like Mr. Number, you can also decide exactly how you want a particular number blocked.

Of course, there is a native iOS, and even Android, feature that is pretty decent when it comes to banning pesky people from your phone, but it’s always good to have third-party apps to give your phone that extra edge.