Spam or Scam Likely Phone Numbers

What is a spam call? 

A spam call is a call made from a number that has been flagged as suspicious by any of the carriers involved, or a call originating from a phone number that the carrier cannot identify. Customers may see their outbound calls display as "Spam," "Spam Likely," "Scam Likely," etc., to recipients in their caller ID. Calls may even be blocked altogether.

Why does spam flagging or call blocking exist:

Spam flagging aims to protect consumers against:

- Unidentified calls
- Robocalling: high-volume, short-duration calls originating from a single number
- Illegal Calls
- Unwanted Calls

As such, regulators and major phone carriers have implemented protective actions to help reduce the occurrence of robocalling, illegal calls, unwanted calls, and calls made from unidentified phone numbers.

Some reasons your number could be blocked or flagged as spam are: 

- If your calls are being blocked to T-Mobile devices, you need to register your phone number with FirstOrion, a free service that T-Mobile uses to identify calls from verified phone numbers. If you are not registered with FirstOrion, this is the most important thing you can do to fix this issue and only takes a few minutes.
- Your phone number is not registered with Hiya, a free service just like FirstOrion, used by AT&T to identify calls from verified phone numbers.
- Consumers may have reported your phone number to their telecom carriers, resulting in your phone number being flagged as spam. This is unlikely, but you can fill out a form to have your phone number removed from this list here: https://reportarobocall.com/trf/

 
Behaviors that may increase spam flagging:
- High volume: Companies that make over 20,000+ calls per month with very low answer rates are generally labeled high volume and may be flagged automatically
- High volume short calls: Typically under 50 seconds
- High volume of unanswered calls
 
How Ringy Can Help:  
Ringy is not able to alert you when your number might possibly be displaying as “spam likely” or something similar. However, we can provide you with best practices to follow to help avoid this from happening.
To start, you should create a Standard Business Profile. Doing so will register your phone numbers with SHAKEN/STIR, which will give your outbound calls the highest SHAKEN/STIR attestation. You can do this by navigating to the Phone Setup page and selecting the Business Profile tab. Please review this article for more information on registering: https://www.ringy.com/knowledge/business-profile-tab
In addition to registering for A2P 10DLC, Free Caller Registry enables entities making legitimate outbound phone calls to submit their data to the three major providers of call management services supporting the major US wireless carriers once via a standard, centralized experience. First Orion, Hiya, and Transaction Network Services ("Analytics Engines") have partnered to streamline the telephone number registration process. This free portal helps entities reach these Analytics Engines that support major wireless and wireline carriers in the US. Register here with Free Caller Registry, and enter your Ringy phone numbers: https://freecallerregistry.com/fcr/
Alternatively, you can register your phone numbers directly with FirstOrion, Hiya, and Verizon:
Please note, if you swap out your Ringy phone numbers, you will need to update these sites. Once you register your phone numbers, please wait 1-3 days before verifying your phone numbers no longer show as spam likely.

Key takeaways:
Create or join a standard business profile within Ringy, and make sure you register with FirstOrion and Hiya. This is the biggest thing you can do so your phone calls don’t show as “spam likely” no matter what platform you use.