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UK Phones Providers Introduce Tougher Blocking of Foreign Scam Calls

Wednesday, Jan 29th, 2025 (8:24 am) - Score 1,160
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Ofcom has confirmed that, from today, UK phone providers (fixed line and mobile) are expected to have implemented changes that aim to block scammers who call from abroad and imitate UK landline numbers (i.e. spoofed calls). Further measures are also expected to follow “later this year“, which will tackle spoofed mobile numbers.

Just to recap. Most of the United Kingdom’s major broadband, phone and mobile providers have already implemented various technical measures to tackle Nuisance Calls and Scam Calls. But these aren’t always 100% effective, and not all operators have introduced the same level of protections. Suffice to say, there’s still plenty of scope for improvement.

NOTE: There are generally two numbers associated with an incoming call: the Network Number, which identifies where the call is being made from; and the Presentation Number, which identifies who is making the call.

Back in 2022 Ofcom moved to further clampdown on such calls by requiring all telephone networks involved in transmitting calls – either to mobiles or landlines – to identify and block spoofed calls, albeit only “where technically feasible” to do so (here). The move improved the accuracy of Calling Line Identification (CLI) and they also made it harder for scammers to access valid phone numbers by introducing additional checks.

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Despite the improvements, scammers who call from abroad could still spoof their number to make it look like the call has come from a trusted UK-based organisation or person, when in fact they are actually calling from another country. Calls like this are naturally more likely to be answered, and thus Ofcom set about working with the industry to impose stricter measures against “Presentation Numbers”.

The Network and Presentation Number are usually the same, but there are some scenarios where a caller may wish to display a different number to the line the call is being made from. For example, an outsourced call centre that makes calls on behalf of different businesses, or businesses which may wish to display a single number for outbound calls.

Ofcom’s approach was to update their CLI Guidance so that phone providers are now expected to identify and block calls from abroad that use a UK geographic or non-geographic telephone number as a Presentation Number, except in a limited number of legitimate use cases. This removes a loophole through which scammers can spoof a UK number from abroad. Ofcom previously gave the industry until 29th January 2025 (today) to implement this.

Marina Gibbs, Policy Director for Networks and Communications, said:

“Today’s strengthened industry guidance will help to further disrupt a common tactic used by fraudsters operating from abroad, as any calls which falsely display a UK landline telephone number should be blocked from getting through.

With further measures to tackle spoofing of UK mobile numbers being announced later this year, Ofcom will continue to play our part alongside the police, other regulators and the telecoms industry in the collaborative effort to protect consumers against scams.”

Some operators, such as BT, already implemented this change last year on a voluntary basis, which resulted in around 1 million calls per day being blocked from entering their network within the first month of operation. The fact that this has today become a standard practice should thus have a significant impact upon the problem, provided it’s being properly implemented by all.

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Ofcom are currently working on technical solutions for extending a similar measure to tackle spoofed mobile numbers (here and here). The regulator is expected to set out their preferred approach to this sometime later this year (around spring), which will require another industry consultation and then an implementation phase (i.e. it’s likely to be early to mid-2026 before this is introduced).

The challenge in all of this invariably stems from the inherent problem of implementing such rules without also over-blocking legitimate voice calls and messages, which is easier said than done – particularly at a time when the UK is in the middle of a transition from analogue to IP-based (digital) phone services. But this should become easier once all such services have gone digital (IP-based) as new methods will then become viable (e.g. CLI Authentication [CLIa] – here).

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Mark-Jackson
By Mark Jackson
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and .
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10 Responses

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  1. Avatar photo Andrew says:

    Nevermind foreign calls, what about calls from the UK, from one of O2 and EE ‘Trusted Partners’.

    Plan.com are using very shady sales tactics to trick people into expensive mobile contracts that cost hundreds or even thousands of pounds to exit

    Something needs to be done about them.

    1. Avatar photo JimB says:

      That isn’t the job of telecom providers. That is Trading Standards. Vent your ire there.

    2. Avatar photo Robert says:

      @Andrew – Regarding Plan.com

      Firstly, file a complaint with Trading Standards.

      Secondly, send your story to the BBC Rip Off Britain show. BBC radio You and Yours show already did a report on them last year.

  2. Avatar photo Big Dave says:

    Trouble is the bad guys are always one step ahead of the good, I’m on BT digital voice and what tends to happen you’ll get a splurge of nuisance calls then they get filtered out for a bit until they find a work around then the game starts again.

  3. Avatar photo MilesT says:

    Had a couple of days when I was plagued with robocalls from “community protection” to my mobile (O2 PAYG), from a variety of UK Geographic landlines (hard to block all of them on the phone).

    There needs to be an easier complaint system, ideally a way of selectively call-forwarding the call to an official body for evidence gathering to facilitate enforcement (hefty fines for the people making the calls and their VoIP gateway operator/ISP

    1. Avatar photo Billy Shears says:

      I couldn’t agree more. How hard can it be to track these companies down and jail the owners? Sadly our “official bodies” seem to be happy to ignore us taxpayers or to prefer to expend their efforts on telling us why it isn’t them it’s someone else that we should be complaining to. “Work” seems to be a four letter word to them.

    2. Avatar photo thehighyeast says:

      You can send an SMS on any network to 7726 (spam in T9) with the text body “Call 0xxxx xxxxxx” as a way to report and assist multi-network efforts to prevent spam/scam artists

    3. Avatar photo Billy Shears says:

      @thy True, but does anyone act on that information or is it just a sop like John Major’s cones hotline? Personally I think all of our reports go straight in the bin.

    4. Avatar photo MilesT says:

      sending a text about a spam call is hard work.

      it would be better to have a capability to forward details from the call history with a few clicks, ideally setting up a free CLI specific forwarder to “reporting” number so they can hear audio/assess volume in a way that is hard for scammers to detect

  4. Avatar photo Name says:

    What they do to work around are GSM gateways located in the UK each having dozens if not hundreds of PAYG SIM cards and connected to the internet as gateway for VoIP operators. Then scammers sitting abroad using VoIP and calling UK number will always identify with UK number. This is why you can’t call back those numbers – because they are in the gateway not mobile phone. For sure mobile operators can see sudden increase in the number of sim cards logged at the same time but not doing anything about it because it is all about money.

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