Today, there are ways to help protect your information from being seen and used without your consent. These “opt-out” lists and “do not call” registries are free to use and in most cases they can be completed online.

OptOutPrescreen

OptOutPrescreen gives you the option to opt-out of credit card offers from Equifax, Experian, Innovis and TransUnion.

Catalog Choice

Choose from a list of merchants that offer an opt-out for catalogs you no longer wish to receive. To read more on how CatalogChoice can help you decrease the amount of junk mail, read more here – catalog choice features

Do Not Call

To opt-out from telemarketing phone calls sign up for the National Do Not Call Registry by visiting DoNotCall

Leave My Child Alone

A variety of resources for parents and information for opting out of OPTIONAL high school data bases that turn over private information on students to military recruiters. Visit LeaveMyChildAlone

Network Advertising Initiative

Online, many advertisers put cookies on your computer so they can gather information used for online advertising. Network Advertising Initiative is a website that offers a way to block the cookies from participating members of their advertising network. To opt-out, visit Network Advantage Initiative.

Network Advantage Initiative also offers tutorials on how to block cookies if you use Explorer, Firefox and Safari:

• Internet Explorer 7.x and Internet Explorer 6.x -Block Cookies Tutorial
• Firefox -Block Cookies Tutorial
• Safari -Block Cookies Tutorial

If you feel you’re being harassed by marketers, try using these sites to opt out.   Do you know of any other sites?  If so, let us know in the comments.

CallsBlocker is a great free Blackberry call blocking software written by Fabian Heuwieser that allows you to block unwanted calls a few different ways. In the application screen, you can enter individual numbers you want to block and block numbers with certain area codes (such as 800, 888, 866, etc.). There are also options to block private, unknown, and withheld numbers.

You can also block numbers from your contact list.

And finally, you can block numbers from your call log as well.

Just visit the CallsBlocker download page, and you can send it to your BlackBerry via SMS or email. You can also download it to your PC and then transfer it to your phone with a data cable.

Although the product page states the minimum requirements are a BlackBerry Storm, Berry Reporter confirmed with Fabian that it should work on all the devices, not just the Storm. Thomas Magsaysay, the author of the Berry Reporter article confirmed first-hand that it does work on a BlackBerry Bold.

What do you think of CallsBlocker? Do you know of any other free tool to block calls on Blackberry?

It is a dark and stormy night. You are home all alone and the phone rings while you are watching the latest horror flick. You jump out of your seat; a little scared and walk to the phone.

But you missed it and they hung up on your voice mail. You look down at the caller ID and see a strange phone number with an unfamiliar area code.

What do you do?

Most people would call that number back. But you forget I am a geek and I like to do things a little differently. I would grab my tablet and bring up the website Who Called Us.

This website allows you to type in the number that called you and see what other people know about this phone number.

I don’t know how helpful this site is but it lets you know that you are not alone and the phone calls are not coming from “INSIDE THE HOUSE!”.

So you pop in that number that called you. In my case it was 425-391-5973. A quick search revealed that 36 other people had recently gotten similar calls from this number and a few people actually got someone on the line preaching about extended auto warranties.

Now I don’t have to worry that some random old friend is trying to send me secret messages by hanging up the phone in a specific sequential order…

I can simply curse out the voice spammers under my breath and add my comment to the WhoCalled.us list.

According to their website, here are their statistics from the last 3 years:

There have been 612237 calls reported in total.
The last 100 calls are shown below.

This database of calls has been graciously provided by the community.
Thank you for taking the time to add to the pool of knowledge.

That is pretty impressive and this website can be a great resource to everyone in the United States. Do you guys in other countries have a similar tool? How do you deal with Voice Spam?

(By) Karl L. Gechlik is a superhero of the IT industry who wears many hats and changes in telephone booths. Karl mostly uses his powers for good and the occasional hysterical prank. Get your geek on & follow his geeky antics at askTheAdmin.com today.