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possible to only recieve calls from contacts?

  • 21 October 2019
  • 4 replies
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My father is suffering from dementia.  He has T-mobile.  In the past 60 days, he has received robo-calls and unsolicited calls from people asking for money.  He has given them what they ask for.  Most recently he fell for the compromised social security number scam and sent people in California $600 to fix the problem and issue him a new SSN.

These calls are becoming more and more frequent and more and more frustrating for the rest of us, to include more and more costly!

He has a flip phone, as he cant do a smart phone.  Is there a setting in the account associated with his number that we can fix it to where he only recieves calls from known numbers, like just those in his contact list?

I understand we can *67 each number but would still have to get to the phone before he does when it rings.

What are some of our options to protect him/us?

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Best answer by smplyunprdctble 21 October 2019, 19:25

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Userlevel 4

I can think of two options:

The first is Family Allowances that allows you to provide numbers that he can call and receive calls from.  This is like $5/mo, I believe.  I don't know if there's a limit as to how many you contacts you can add, and this has to be maintained every time a new contact needs to be added.

The second is to look at the phone's user manual and see if it can block unknown callers (in the fashion you speak).  It will send them to voicemail.  This means any doctor appointment reminder calls and that not programmed in his phone would get sent as well.  Some have a full-on block.  I don't know how he handles his voicemail currently.  (a lot of those spam calls say "call us back at this number", and if he calls them back, you're back to him answering the phone)

T-Mobile doesn't have a copy of your phonebook, so they can't link directly to "only folks I have in the phone book".  I THINK these are your two options.

Userlevel 6
Badge +15

The post above has some good ideas. Keep in mind, the Family Allowance feature lets you set up 10 lines on our Never Allowed list if that's something you were thinking of using.

Userlevel 4
Badge +9

Have you used Tmo's spam blocking? Log on to the T-Mobile in question, drop down on My Account, choose profile, and scroll down to Blocking. Block all spam on his line. 😉 His phone will not even ring for spam callers.

Badge +1

I hate worthless scum that scam old people. 

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