Guide

How to stop spam and nuisance calls in the UK

Nothing stops every unwanted call. Four things together cut most nuisance calls down: registering with the TPS, blocking numbers on your phone, reporting calls to the right place, and checking before you ring back. Each one stops a different kind of call, and each has a limit the others cover.

Facts checked 27 September 2026 · Sources

Spam, nuisance or scam?

They feel the same when the phone rings, but they want different things, and the right response differs too.

The signs of a scam call are about what the caller asks, not how they sound: urgency, a demand to move money or read out a code, a threat of arrest, or payment by gift card or cryptocurrency. Scammers often do know your name, because names are cheap. Our scam calls page walks through the tells, and silent and one-ring calls explains the calls where nobody speaks.

1. Register with the Telephone Preference Service

The TPS is the free, official register of people who do not want sales calls. Once your number has been on it for 28 days, an organisation may not make unsolicited live sales or marketing calls to you without your consent.

• Landline: register on the TPS website.
• Mobile: text TPS and your email address to 85095. The text is free.
• Allow 28 days for the registration to take full effect.
• It will not stop scam calls, recorded messages, silent calls, market research, debt collection or companies based overseas.

2. Block nuisance calls on your mobile

Blocking stops a number reaching you again, which is useful for a caller who rings from the same number every day and useless against one that changes number every call. Labels move between software versions, so the pictures show the shape of it rather than one exact build.

On an iPhone

Open the Phone app, tap Recents, tap the information button beside the call and choose Block Caller. To send every caller you don’t know straight to voicemail, go to Settings, tap Apps, then Phone, then Screen Unknown Callers, and choose Silence.

On an Android phone

In the Google Phone app, tap More, then Call history, tap the call and choose Block/report spam. To block every caller with no number, go to Settings, then Blocked numbers, and turn on Unknown. Other makes of phone use their own menus, so the names may differ.

On a landline

Ask your phone provider what call blocking it offers and whether it costs anything. Calls from hidden numbers are covered in withheld and No caller ID calls.

3. Report nuisance calls

Each report goes somewhere different, and does a different job. Find the kind of call you had:

Use the three together

Registering, blocking and reporting each stop a different kind of call, and each one has a hole the other two cover.

4. Check before you ring back

A missed call is not an instruction to call back. Look the number up first: what people reported, which phone company its range belongs to, and whether it is a premium rate or an unexpected international number. Never ring a number a caller gave you to “verify” them; use the number on your card, your bill or the organisation’s own website. If the number on your screen looked like your bank’s, read caller ID spoofing.

Why the calls come from a different number every time

Blocking works on one number, and many nuisance callers don’t keep one. A call centre can hold many numbers and rotate through them, and caller ID can be faked, so the number on your screen may not be the one that rang. That is why the same kind of call keeps arriving from new numbers, sometimes UK-wide ones such as 0333 and 0330 numbers, or local-looking ones. Registering with the TPS and reporting cover what blocking can’t. How the faking works: caller ID spoofing.

If you run a business and your calls go unanswered

The same defences that protect people also catch legitimate callers: a number nobody recognises gets ignored or reported. Claiming your number will let anyone who looks it up see it is yours; it isn’t open yet, and you can join the list to hear when it is. A bulk list check tidies the numbers you call from and to.