Are VoIP and robocalls bad?

Modern life has brought to us millions of advantages. However, as it happens with everything, there is a list of ups and downs in all of these developments. Although the good ones dominate and overshadow the bad ones, in most cases, some of them stand out. This is the circumstance with robocalls.

Robocalls are becoming a very frequent practice around the world. If the situation is seen objectively, this does not imply anything negative in the first place, since some of them can be considered useful and even beneficial. The real problem with robocalls is that a considerable and growing proportion of them are turning into calls that would lead to scams.

One of the most notorious quality of robocalls is their diversity. There are many types of robocalls: some of them are helpful, some are just annoying and others are dangerous. The users need to be able to identify with which type of robocalls they are dealing with when they receive one. But first of all, let’s define what a robocall is. 

 What are robocalls?

Robocalls are auto-dialed calls that are commonly accompanied by pre-recorded messages. The goal of robocalls is to quickly reach a significant number of people in order to pass them information. For this reason, robocalls can be considered to be spam.

Contrary to popular belief, the vast majority of robocalls are recorded by people, so it is quite unusual to hear the voice of a robot on the other end of the phone line. Taking this characteristic into account, that is why it can sometimes be difficult to distinguish a robocall from a real call.

The task of making robocalls can be facilitated by the use of Voice over Internet Protocol technology. Better known as VoIP, this is a virtual telephone system that has revolutionized the telecommunications industry. Due to its characteristics, it allows users to place hundreds of calls at the same time by just using a stable internet connection. In this way, robocallers can make calls in a massive approach in order to reach the most amount of people as possible.

 Types of robocalls

The reality is that to be able to catalog robocalls can be a complicated task since in very general lines, robocalls can be classified into two broad categories: legal and illegal. For a robocall to be characterized in one or another category, it must meet a series of specific criteria.

In overall, legal robocalls do not seek to cause any harm to users. To be able to carry out a robocall in a lawful way, the person who is going to receive it must have given their prior consent. The only exception to this rule is when it is a robocall communicating an emergency. For example, to warn about the possibility of a natural disaster.

Some legal robocalls are the confirmation of an appointment with a service provider or a doctor’s office, a public service announcement to inform a community of an event, and even to remind a person that a prescription needs to be refilled.

On the contrary, illegal robocalls are those that do not have any kind of permission. In this case, there are two scenarios. The first one is that the robocaller is not aware of the laws and makes innocent calls like promoting some offer that just results in annoyance. The other scenario is that the individual that is making the robocall is planning to obtain some kind of financial gain by tricking and scamming the victim.

Something that has gotten very much in evidence in the past few years is that scammers are always seeking new ways to commit fraudulent acts. This is why individuals must try to stay as more up-to-dated as possible when it comes to know which are the innovative ways in which scams are being committed. That is why it is important to know the different types of robocalls, so that the proper actions can be taken. 

Some high-risk robocalls include health insurance scams that seek to obtain the personal information of the victim, tax scams with the objective to ask for money to be given directly to the caller, to pay an outstanding debt immediately, and even customer service scams when the fraudsters pretend to be legitimate enterprises trusted by the target, to ask them for their personal information.

 How about robocalls and VoIP?

In general, the robocalls themselves are not bad, the problem is the use that some individuals give to them. This is the same reasoning to why it should be used with VoIP technology. Some people may feel discouraged away from this phone service due to the inappropriate handling of some unscrupulous clients, but the reality is that VoIP is an excellent tool that has been in charge of changing forever the way we communicate, making it more versatile, affordable and efficient.

Many are the benefits that can be obtained from using VoIP services. For example, there are some VoIP number providers like VerifyWithSMS that offer a phone verification service to make it easier for users to validate accounts on different platforms. Another good example that could be very illustrative, are the companies which tend to be the most benefited from this technology due to the fact that costs are reduced while at the same time they improve their communicating effectiveness.

 

The moral is that any tool that currently exists can be used for unscrupulous purposes. That is why it is important to keep yourself up-to-date on these new tools and understand how they work and get the best out of them.