Spam calls are a sad reality in today's telephone communications world. Countries like the US alone receive almost 60 billion automated or irrelevant calls during 2020, which amounts to over 100 calls per person during the course of the year. Freespee, with the amount of telephone numbers in use at any given moment, is likely to receive spam calls that may interfere with our customers and their business. 

With that in mind, we have some automated and manual processes in place to minimise the impact as much as possible, that we can share with our customers if asked:

Automated processes

IP-blocking: If our system detects several sessions or request numbers coming from the same IP address in a short period of time, an IP block from our end is then triggered (stopping the number being replaced for said IP, but not affecting other customers or visitors using other connections).

The IP Block is a feature introduced in order to prevent bots and crawlers from going onto a customer's website and requesting hundreds of numbers in a short period of time, draining our available number pools. If our script detects multiple sessions (e.g. closing and opening the browser) within a short time from the same IP address, it will block any future requests for numbers for the next hour. Afterwards we will provide Dynamic numbers again. 

Number blacklisting: Our system will automatically block and blacklist callers if they behave in a manner that can be regarded as automated or unnatural. If one caller performs a high volume of calls in a short period of time or at regular intervals that indicate an automated process, our system will automatically blacklist the number and prevent any further calls to any Freespee number. 

DNCS API solution: We also have means to block crawlers and scrapers that may extract data from your website, and generate a high volume of unwanted requests for phone numbers. For example, a single IP will be able to request a limited amount of Freespee numbers per 24 hours cycles (since these are mainly requested per click). After the cycle, the block is automatically lifted. 

Manual processes

When all the above fails, we may still encounter situations where unwanted calls are still happening, for example automated calls from multiple callers (thanks to software generating random or predetermined caller Ids to circumvent our safety measures) or anonymous callers. Perhaps one Freespee number is been used on a scam and used as a fake contact, or a website has outdated information listing one of the numbers we now own referring still to its previous owner or business. 

If you experience any issue with one of our numbers, or you are receiving unwanted calls, contact us on support@freespee.com and our team will be able to remove any affected numbers from use, or block selected callers if needed.