Cellular Providers Are Incorrectly Tagging My Number As SPAM

Summary:

We have recently discovered that certain calls from phone numbers on our network to phone numbers of U.S. cellular carrier accounts are incorrectly being marked as SPAM. We have seen this issue with AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile, with AT&T being the most aggressive in marking such calls incorrectly. Our limited testing of Canadian cellular carriers and landlines does not show the same issue.

Our testing also shows that this issue is not specific to Key 2 IP. Accounts with other unified communications (UC) providers exhibit the same behavior.

This issue is caused by features cellular carriers use within their service networks that mark calls as SPAM, similar to how we are able to tag our calls. Currently, there is no universal method for opting out of the “scam lists” that mark calls as SPAM as they are governed by separate private entities. However, many carriers do provide a method to report legitimate phone numbers being blocked or marked as SPAM. In addition, the major caller reputations services have a single website to register your number and dispute if it has been marked as SPAM.

All customers should first report their issue with freecallerregistry.com. Free Caller Registry allows for single submission to the three primary caller reputation providers who work with the major carriers. This can take approximately one week to complete.

In addition to the free call registry link, some carriers have their own method of reporting issues with phone numbers:

T-Mobile: 

T-Mobile customers can report the issue at this link: https://callreporting.t-mobile.com/, allowing the user to report one phone number at a time or submit a bulk list of numbers.

Verizon:

Verizon provides instructions for reporting this issue at the following link: https://www.verizon.com/support/residential/homephone/calling-features/stop-unwanted-calls.

Under the “Spam Alerts” section, it advises the following: To report numbers that you believe should be listed as spam, or incorrectly labeled as such, please visit https://voicespamfeedback.com/vsf/.

AT&T:

AT&T provides instructions for reporting this issue at the following link: www.att.com/reviewmycalllabel 

Google:

Google does not have a method on their website for reporting this issue, please use the Hiya link mentioned earlier to report the issue: https://hiyahelp.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/requests/new?ticket_form_id=824667.

Apple:

Apple does not have a method on their website for reporting this issue, please use the Hiya link mentioned earlier to report the issue: https://hiyahelp.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/requests/new?ticket_form_id=824667.

 

Information about additional carriers and caller reputation providers can be found here.