What to Do When Your Caller ID Is Flagged as Spam, Junk, Fraud, or Scam Likely

Call blocking is a tool that phone companies, carriers, and mobile network operators (MNOs) use to crack down on illegal calls. Many of these practices were put in place as a result of FCC guidance, the TRACED Act, and other rules and regulations.

Although these policies have resulted in billions of illegal robocalls being blocked each year (according to the FCCs annual report, June 2021), it’s also resulted in a great deal of hassle for people whose lawful businesses had their numbers wrongly flagged as spam.

This article covers the reasons why this might have happened to you and what you can do about it.

Table of Contents

What Causes a Number to Be Wrongly Marked as Spam?

Phone numbers can be wrongly marked as Spam, Junk, Fraud, Scam Likely, Telemarketer, etc. by carriers using automatic spam ID detection features or when multiple recipients manually report the number as such. When placing high volumes of outbound calls with higher-than-average drop percentages and little availability to answer return calls, there’s a high chance that your number will earn a high spam rating.

Carriers are primarily private companies. As such, they have their own private analytics that they use to determine which numbers to flag, when to flag them, and why. Unfortunately, those analytics are generally not very transparent, meaning there’s little information available to the public about why a number is flagged as spam.

On the bright side, the number of false positives (that’s the phrase used to describe what is happening to you) are decreasing as the technology improves. But there’s still quite a ways to go before legitimate use cases stop being wrongly flagged.

Know the Laws

FCC guidelines require all telemarketers (e.g., sales cold calls, advertising campaigns, or community fundraisers) to obtain “oral or written consent” before placing any kind of pre-recorded call to landlines or cell phones. Failure to obtain that consent can result in carriers flagging your number and the FCC potentially fining your business. Further FCC guidance is as follows:

• No making telemarketing calls between the hours of 9:00 p.m. and 8:00 a.m. (local time for the recipient).

• Telemarketers must provide their name and the name, phone number, and address of their employer.

• There is no longer any exception to these rules based on “an established business relationship.”

• Carriers can block calls based on “reasonable analytics” (this is what brings us to this article).

Correcting a False Positive Spam Flag

Correcting a false positive spam flag is more so a matter of registration than anything else. Since you’re operating a legitimate business, there’s usually no reason for carriers to mark your numbers as spam. So, all you’ll need to do in most cases is just let them know. You can do so by registering. But first, it’ll be helpful to know how your caller ID is displaying when placing outbound calls.

Perform a Number Search to See How the Caller ID Is Displayed

Open

Searching for your numbers can help you get a better picture of how they’re displaying when you place outbound calls. This is based on the databases that most carriers will query when searching for your caller ID, helping to see if the caller ID you requested has been properly set. Unfortunately, your number might still be flagged as spam even if it doesn’t tell you in the search.

Contact Each Carrier (Not Just the One That Holds Your Number)

If you’re confident that your numbers are wrongly displaying as spam, contact each major carrier to register your numbers for legitimate business use cases. This can be done by reaching out to each of the following contacts:

Contact Mongotel Client Support

Although there’s nothing we can do about this issue, there may be something we can help you do. If nothing else, we’ll enjoy the conversation!

14 Tips for Preventing Your Caller ID from Being Marked as Spam

1. Never use an invalid phone number.

2. Never display an invalid phone number in your caller ID.

3. Never display the caller ID of a phone number that you do not own.

4. Never use a number listed on the Do Not Originate list.

5. Place fewer outbound or return calls per minute, especially before 9:00 a.m. or after 5:00 p.m.

6. Avoid calling the same number more than nine times per day.

7. When using an auto-dialer, maintain a drop rate of less than 3%.

8. Make sure inbound calls can complete successfully (callers need to be able to reach you when returning your call).

9. Avoid calling numbers on the federal Do Not Call Registry.

10. Try to spread calls across multiple receiving carriers and multiple geographical areas rather than focusing on one locale at a time.

11. Use a rotating group of caller IDs so none is making an inordinate number of calls each month.

12. Purchase one or more local numbers for each area in which you do business (and use those numbers when calling recipients in that locale).

13. Register your number with the carriers and registries mentioned above.

14. Use a call branding service (Mongotel can set you up with helpful CNAM free of charge).

Wrap-Up

If the guidance described in this article doesn’t get you out of this bind and your numbers are still being wrongfully marked as spam, give us a call and we’ll work together to find something that does!

Having Trouble? Contact Support!

Either we’re forgetting something or this process is just too simple. If you’ve encountered a problem, comment it here and we’ll get to work writing up troubleshooting steps to solve it. In the meantime, our Support Team will be happy to connect.

Contact us at (718) 942-9990, by dialing 611 on any Mongotel-programmed phone, or by emailing helpdesk@mongotel.com and we’ll get you the care you need ASAP. For anything other than service-related requests or issues, the team at info@mongotel.com stands ready to assist you.

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