Who is Scam Likely and Why Are They Calling Me?

What the heck?

You’re on your lunch break and your phone starts ringing. But instead of a name from your caller ID or a phone number being displayed, all your phone says is “Scam Likely” as it continues to ring.

The last thing you want to do is spend your break dealing with a call that’s labeled “Scam Likely”. However, you’ve never seen your caller ID display this before.

My advice to you would be to not answer the call. Here’s why…

What does “Scam Likely” mean?

I get your confusion as well as your curiosity. I’m guessing that you probably have determined not to pick up the phone, as your screen is ultimately telling you that your call is from a scammer.

You are wise not to pick up the phone because a “Scam Likely” call is a call labeled as a scam by your T-Mobile or Metro PCS service provider. If there is a high chance that the phone call is a scam, your service provider will let you know by providing the “Scam Likely” text on your incoming call.

Side Note: This service is currently only available for Android or iOS phone providers.

Why Did T-Mobile Roll Out This Scam Calling Tool?

T-Mobile’s new spoof identification technology is designed to recognize the source of the call you are receiving before it reaches your phone to help combat the various forms of spam calls.

Since T-Mobile has given their free scam ID service to their T-Mobile users as well to their Metropcs users (T-Mobile owns Metro PCS) they have flagged over 6 billion scam calls. T-Mobile also makes the claim that they can flag over 90% of all scam calls. Source: T-Mobile

T-Mobile offers this service for free as they feel that everyone can benefit from scam call protection.

How do they decide what gets labelled as a scam?

With T-Mobile claiming that they are able to pinpoint 90% of all the scam calls that their customers receive, how do they determine this spam calls with such accuracy?

Thanks to modern technology, it’s actually pretty easy to determine whether or not a phone is a scam call. Most scam ID services work by comparing phone numbers to a database of thousands of known scammer phone numbers.

This database is always being updated to make the service as accurate as possible by looking at call patterns. For example, if a phone number is calling a large amount of people and people are hanging up on that phone number immediately, or not answering it at all, that phone number will more than likely be marked as a scam number.

Why Does T-Mobile offer this service for free?

With such a valuable tool, you would wonder why T-Mobile off for this useful service to their customers for free when they could charge a fee? There are plenty of people willing to pay for a service that provides them safety from scam callers.

T-Mobile is offering special perks to try and rake in more customers and to create a positive image, and it’s all a part of their marketing plan. T-Mobile’s CEO, John Legere, is very involved with his customers and gives away free stuff all the time on Twitter, and they even offer freebies every week on Tuesdays with the download of their App, T-Mobile Tuesdays.

If their tool detects 90% of Spam Calls, what about the other 10%?

It is a given that T-Mobile as well as other spam calling services do not have the means necessary to provide a tool where they can spot 100% of all scam calls.

Furthermore, T-Mobile cannot guarantee that every call that is labelled as a scam call is actually a scam call.

Because of this flaw in the system, it still isn’t safe to answer a call from an unknown phone number. Furthermore, if a “scam likely” call leaves an important voicemail after you didn’t pick-up the phone, how do you determine if they really are a scam or not? Unless you recognize the person on the other end, this may be tricky.

Some well-known tips:

You could look up the phone number on Google, however Google’s search results won’t always be 100% accurate. You could also answer the phone, but if you care about your privacy and safety, I wouldn’t suggest it. The easiest way to determine if your call is a spam caller or not is use Wyty’s Reverse Phone Lookup feature.

What Is A Reverse Phone Lookup?

A reverse phone lookup is it lookup where you type a phone number into the search bar of a people search directory. Once the number is typed in, a quick scan of over a billion records will determine if there is any owner information available on the phone number. If owner information is found, it will be displayed in the results. You can also find out other information on the owner of a phone number, such as their home address.

Enabling and Disabling Your Scam ID Feature

Scam ID should automatically work if you have T-Mobile or Metro PCS. However, if for whatever reason it doesn’t, simply enable it by dialing #664# on your phone’s keypad.

If you don’t want to ever receive calls that are being labelled as a scam, you can enable T-Mobile’s Scam Block feature. If you want T-Mobile’s Scam Block feature (which blocks these scams calls that come though so you don’t even have to see them) you have to manually activate it. To do so, dial #662# on your phone’s keypad. You can also dial #632# to turn this feature off.

How does the Scam Block feature work?

Using the same database that T-Mobile uses to determine if a caller is a scammer or not, T-Mobile will then block calls that are labelled as scammers instead of just informing you that the call is a scam call. This feature is also free for T-Mobile and Metropcs subscribers.

How to report a mislabeled scam call

If you received a call from someone safe that was labelled as “Scam Likely”, it is your duty to report the call as safe.

Report the call here so that it can be marked as a safe caller.

Final Thoughts…

Spam calling is becoming a huge epidemic. If you own a cell phone, you have to know how frustrating it is to receive spam calls on the regular. T-Mobile has stepped up to the plate by offering free spam protecting services to their T-Mobile and Metropcs customers.

If you don’t use T-Mobile or MetroPCS, there are still ways that you can protect yourself from scam callers. A good start would be contacting your cell phone provider to see if they have any scam prevention services to add unto your plan.

Additionally, there are many scam prevention apps available for iOS and Android users that are easy to download, some of them don’t charge a penny.