phone privacy

Phone privacy has evolved over the years, as indicated below. (Service links below are for Verizon Mass.)

Items in red below are bad for privacy, while items in green are good for privacy.

1. 1876: Alexander Graham Bell invents the telephone
2. 1930s: Telephones are commonly available; now anyone can call you via a switchboard operator.
3. 1950s: Central phone switches allow anyone to call you anonymously.
4. 1970s: Phone answering machines can screen your calls.
5. 1970s: Non-published (or non-listed) service eliminates most junk phone calls, even today! It is annoying that they can charge for this.
6. 1980s: Caller ID shows who is calling you.
7. 1990s: Per call block of outgoing caller ID info allows anonymous calls again. (Press *67 before placing a call you want to dial anonymously; does not work for 911 and toll free services.)
8. 1990s: Per line blocking makes all outgoing calls anonymous by default. (Press *82 to disable this for a single call.)
9. 1990s: "Call block" allows you to setup a "blacklist" of phone numbers not allowed to call you. (Blocked numbers must be in your region.) Press *60 for info. To block the person who just called you, press *60#, wait for tone, press 01#, wait for info. Press *80 to turn call block off. (Has anyone gotten this to work?)
10. 1990s: Anonymous call rejection (ACR) can automatically refuse all anonymous calls! This is very cool, but will confuse some of your non-technical callers. (If you have Verizon Caller ID, you get ACR automatically: press *77 to enable and *87 to disable.)
11. 2000s: Call intercept allows callers from blocked lines to identify themselves by saying their name or entering a PIN. This is the best phone privacy service by far. It works great!

If you have any corrections to this page, please let me know.

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