Phone spam is effective because it preys on our instinctive empathy with the human voice. Psychology is on it's side. People have a harder time hanging up on call centres than they do trashing junk mail. Despite being mildly annoyed, or even (in my case) offended at the unsolicited call, it seems only polite to end things gracefully with what is in most cases an otherwise pennyless third-world dweller. We're also accustomed to it; my parents accept sales calls as part of their everyday lives without so much as a question mark. They never just hang up. They often spend a while mulling over the details of said product/service before deciding they were never interested in it in the first place.

Spam is spam is unsolicited communication, whether the medium is a human voice over copper wire or not. Spam is everywhere. Metropolitan dwellers benefit from good spam filters due to over-exposure to banal information. The over-stimulated can block out all sorts. I'm perfectly capable of avoiding eye contact with any number of fundraisers along any given street in Central London, let alone hanging up on an unsolicited caller (actually, that's not entirely true - i usually try to shame them first). You could argue this renders me less human - after all, many of the goals of said fundraising drives are noble ones - but if i can make an informed decision on which organisations to donate to from the comfort of my own head (or home, even) i'll choose that over unsolicited communication. It's hard to balance these built-in spam filters with the kind of playful curiosity that teaches me new, unexpected things, but it's a balancing act i can't escape from if i'm to survive the information age with my brain intact.

But back to this post's main purpose - mainly to remind you that BT have finally decided to tackle phone spam with the introduction of BT Privacy. For too long they've offered a paid-for 'call blocking' service, which is tantamount to purchasing an email client only to find the spam filter requires extra subscription fees. Completely unethical and unacceptable from BT, but hey, they own the network, so what are you going to do about it? Talk to Ofcom? Exactly.

BT Privacy sounds pretty basic - blacklisting and anonymous caller rejection the only two services i see as any use in reducing spam. Their description of the 'caller display' feature is indicative:

Caller Display lets you see the number that's calling, unless it's withheld or unavailable

Hasn't this been available on most telephone networks for the last ten years? Next they'll be marketing tone dialling all over again.

The only real find amongst all the marketing is the tie-in with the Telephone Preference Service. In their own words,

The Telephone Preference Service (TPS) is a central opt out register whereby individuals can register their wish not to receive unsolicited sales and marketing telephone calls. It is a legal requirement that companies do not make such calls to numbers registered on the TPS.

A curious service leveraging a law which i find almost unimaginably difficult to enforce. It's like registering your email and saying, 'ok, i am going to prosecute every single spammer to this address'.

Hello?