Recently I listened to a technology program that discussed
Caller ID apps. This came up because of a recent story where hundreds of people
were arrested in India for running a scam where they called US citizens and
pretended to be the IRS http://www.wsj.com/articles/indian-police-detain-workers-over-possible-irs-phone-scam-1475674691
I read another article that was really interesting about how one journalist
kept scammers on the phone for a long period of time and learned a lot about
their operation http://www.vox.com/first-person/2016/10/18/13276464/irs-scam-phone-cartoon
.
There are a lot of telemarketers and phone scammers that
call these days and they seem to ignore the Do Not Call list that has been
created by the FCC. Several app companies have created crowd sourced databases
to combat this annoyance. I have reviewed a couple below and each has its
strengths and weaknesses.
Hiya (Free)
Android and iOS – This app came from the company that created WhitePages.com.
They have a really nice interface and users can make calls directly from the
app. There are no ads and users can block both calls and SMS (text) messages
from various numbers. They have a large database of numbers that is constantly
growing.
True Caller (Free)
Android and iOS – As caller ID and call blocking apps go this app has the most
users and the largest number database. The app has ads and not the nicest
interface, good just not great. I like that when it does recognize a spam number
the whole screen is red which screams to me “Don’t answer!”.
Website: https://www.truecaller.com/
Whos Call (Free)
Android and iOS – This app comes from the same website that a lot of people use
as a reverse lookup to see who or what just called them when they don’t
recognize a number. I really like the user interface of this app the best but
unfortunately it does not have a large database. The lookup feature is the
strongest part and when it finds a number in its database it has a good amount
of information about it. The app has ads but they are very small and
unobtrusive.
Contactive (Free)
Android only – I was not able to try this app out but I found it interesting
enough to include it. The app pairs up with the user’s social media accounts so
that when someone calls it shows it shows all kinds of information about that person
and their picture. It also has a database of telemarketers and scammers. You
can browse friends in your contact list and see information from their social media
accounts at a glance. The interface looks nice and it has a large database of
numbers.
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