8 Ways to Minimize Your Spam Calls and SMS to Prevent Scams in India [Basic + Advanced]
Let’s face it spam can’t be reduced by 100%. But there are ways to tackle it effectively.
I’ve accepted that the 3 realities of modern life are:
LIFE
DEATH
SPAM
So, forget about reducing it by 100%, but we can surely make a dent — a decent-sized dent.
First things first, spammers aren’t the “good guys”
We are taught to be polite to strangers while growing up by our parents but spammers are heartless robots.
If you say no politely, they won’t cross off your number from the list, they will just move it down in a rolling list. When the list is finished, they will roll back and try your number again.
99% of the time they don’t even know who you are.
You are just a phone number to them that they got off in a list their boss gave them whose boss gave it to them whose boss bought it from a data broker.
I bet they identify if it’s a man's or woman’s number based on your voice when you say hello. So, they might even decide to say hi sir or hi mam based on your voice.
They aren’t honest sellers. Don’t give them the respect — block them.
Let’s start with the basics
- DND All the Way
Start by enabling full DND from the TRAI DND app. It might not be a complete solution (it only raises a complaint to the operator about the offending numbers and often the users can just lie about their activity), but hey, it’s free. At least turn it on — can’t hurt, right?
2. Outsmart Your Bank
When you open a new bank account, sign up for their DND service instantly. Don’t let them bombard you with marketing calls. And here’s a trick — annoy your relationship manager to speed up the process (coz if you don’t, they will hound you). No more waiting for 45 days.
Coz within 45 days (1.5 months) you will forget you submitted and you will come again for it. At which point this whole cycle will repeat. DON’T LET THEM PLAY YOU AROUND. It takes 1 click to remove your number from a marketing list or to change a setting on your account. The bank may have its processes to get it approved. But when a process takes 45 days, you know it’s designed to make you give up.
3. Swift Action
When you get a call from an unknown number, you will know it’s spam in the first 3 seconds (1 second if it’s a robot call). Add it to your blocklist instantly. Be ruthless and they can’t call/SMS you from that same number again.
Frankly, this won’t stop spam but it will reduce it. They will just buy another number and nobody stops them. But the breadth of their impact on your life is greatly reduced if you keep blocking these numbers.
4. Beware of Truecaller
Don’t install Truecaller. It claims to protect you from spam, but it might be causing it.
It's reading all your SMS, phone state, and almost everything else, which it doesn’t even need for its function. It’s reading all this data and probably selling it. It’s a legalized spam app pretending to be an anti-spam app.
All it does is mark them red and there have been times when I have noticed the Truecaller spam doesn’t even kick in when you get calls from unknown numbers — so it protects those numbers and you have to pick them up to find out who it is.
They have a paid plan which brands can purchase which makes their number green and not red so you can’t avoid them. They don’t sell it to anyone — they say they allow it to be used by customer support teams of recognized brands for the green numbers. So green numbers are not supposed to be used for anything other than customer service.
But I’ve observed these numbers being used for upsell spam. NoBroker specifically did that with me over and over again — 2 times I shouted, 3rd time I abused coz they forgot my name and called me as if it was the first time. don’z
The conclusion is that you don’t need Truecaller to fight spam. You don’t NEED Truecaller for anything.
Now, let’s tackle spam calls without Truecaller:
Advanced Tactics to Manage Spam Calls and SMS in India
5. Turn off location permission for shopping apps
For the more tech-savvy — turn off location permissions for finance, banking, and shopping apps. They’re stalking your spending habits. No need to share your every move.
They’re tracking your spending patterns based on your location. The app will tell you location services are needed for personalized services and offers. It’s false.
Do you know what they are personalizing?
They are personalizing their “marketing” messages, i.e., emails, notifications, and ads, or what we call “spam”.
Location pattern is to track your movement. They only need spending patterns which they get from your location patterns.
Here’s an example: Starbucks coffee -> Manyavar store for wedding shopping -> Taj or Hilton or another big-name hotel for a dinner date
They know you are in a spending mood now — you probably already spent a big amount on all these expensive locations. And they know you are probably tired at night after so much movement during the day.
Next thing you know, these shopping apps will share a late-night notification for some very expensive wedding-related products. Urban Company might send you full-body waxing notifications. Zepto might send you a notification to buy condoms — you get the point about how creepy this can get!
This is possible coz you LET them track your location when their core function is not related to the location permissions at all. But they ask for location permissions during flows of other crucial tasks like ordering some time or during first-time installation of the app. So you just allow the permission to move the annoying permission box away — these are very dark UX patterns.
6. Turn off location permissions for finance, banking, and payment apps
Turn off location permissions for Gpay/PhonePe/Paytm.
Why does Google/PhonePe/Paytm need to know where you are when you spend money?
It doesn’t need it for function. It needs it for ads personalization and it may be selling your data. After you turn off their location access, they’ll annoy you to turn on location when you do a first transaction, turn it off. It will ask you for location access after you enter your UPI pin while sending money.
And because of its placement, it will make you feel like you can’t send money without the location turned on, it’s false, don’t be quick to get rid of that message, you might re-enable the location access again accidentally.
Read that message again, it’s optional to turn on location for sending money, it only appears mandatory coz of how these data guzzlers placed it, BE BRAVE and say no to location sharing for non-maps-related functions.
They won’t send such manipulating notifications for a long time if you deny their attempts the first time.
7. Turn off location permission for food and delivery apps
Apps like Zomato and Swiggy don’t need location permissions after you have set up a home location or when ordering your food from a different location for the first time. For regular use from the same location, location permission is not required at all. They can share your address and location with the rider coz you store and tag your address to your account before your first order. The address doesn’t need to be recalibrated on every order from the same location.
8. More granular permission hacks
Android offers an “only when I use the app” permission level for location sharing. It means the app can use device location only when it’s active. Sounds good, but it’s a sneaky way to track you.
Coz most users don’t close the app — After turning location access on for App A and using it for a while, they just press the Home button and open/switch to another App B. So while A runs in the background, it can potentially read everything you do while B is on.
So as soon as your work is done, forcefully drag the app off the screen and close it.
To be on the safe side, don’t even use the “only when I use the app” permission level. Set it to “always ask” for all necessary apps that need your location to do their core function every time.
It takes 1 tap to enable location access to them when they need it. The app will ask you when they need location permission for an essential function, so you can ensure that 1 tap is for the “Only this time” setting from within the app when they need it.
Thank you for reading thus far. This blog post was written by Navin Israni, a passionate writer somewhere on the Autism spectrum. On Medium, Navin rants and writes about life from his unique perspective. Professionally, Navin is an IT engineer turned technical writer turned content marketer — he knows a thing or two about how search engines work. He is also a B2B SaaS Freelance Writer and is open to being hired as a freelance contributor for publications in the productivity and mental health space. You can reach him at TheCreativeMastermind@gmail.com or on his LinkedIn.
