Can you block robocalls from landlines?

by Katie Ritchie

Can you block robocalls from your landline phone?

Bruce Donatelli, the reader who wrote me about robocall landlines, followed up last week. He graciously let me know about his progress against his landline robocallers. He had already registered for the “Do Not Call” list, and had been registered for years. Clearly, the robocallers who have been pestering him were operating outside of the law.

Fortunately, his Panasonic telephone has a base station which displays a caller ID record. His telephone also has a “block” feature. He realized he had received repeated calls over the last three months from the same numbers. The calls were from Beech Island and Whitmire, both cities in SC. His device has a block key, and after selecting the phone numbers, he was able to block both of them and as of his last email to me he hadn’t gotten any further robocalls.

If your phone isn’t as advanced as this savvy reader’s, but you have found you get calls from the same numbers regularly, make note of them and contact your telephone provider. They should be able to block those numbers from calling you in the future.

If you’re getting calls from multiple scammers or robocalls using different numbers, it may be difficult to block them all. It might also get expensive, as some phone providers charge for the privilege of blocking pests. There’s new tech available now that, like Mr. Donatelli’s phone, can block numbers from calling your landline. I’ll share those next week.

If you have a tech question, I’d love to hear from you at [email protected] .