Goodbye to spam calls? A law that could be key to ending them goes into effect this Saturday.

The Spanish government wants to put an end to spam calls to improve people's lives. This constitutional body maintains its goal of eliminating them by requiring companies to use a specific prefix when making commercial calls . However, if they don't, operators can automatically block these calls before they even reach their mobile phone.

Thanks to this regulatory change affecting the Customer Service Act (CSA), the measure allows for the creation of new prefixes exclusively for commercial calls. This way, telemarketing companies will only be able to call from numbers with a specific prefix, operators will be able to automatically identify and block calls that violate the law, and the phone will even notify the user that it is a commercial call.

However, despite this measure being relatively new, the general ban on commercial calls without prior consent came into effect in June 2023, following the reform of the General Telecommunications Law . But why do they keep calling? Some companies 'take refuge' in the belief that users were once customers, gave their consent, or 'forgot' to remove their registrations. Therefore, with the arrival of mandatory prefixes, as mentioned above, operators will be able to adapt their network and call management systems to automatically identify assigned commercial numbers.

However, in order to strengthen the regulations, two new measures of the Anti-Scam Plan will come into effect starting this Saturday, June 7. As indicated by the Ministry for Digital Transformation and Civil Service in an official statement , on the one hand, citizens will no longer be able to receive spam calls and SMS that are of international origin , but that simulate having originated from a Spanish number in order to deceive the user - being one of the most common practices in telephone fraud attempts . In addition, on the other hand, commercial calls cannot be made from mobile numbers , since another important part of scams occur when the individual receives calls from national mobile phones that are not saved in their address book, so they cannot identify the caller.

Therefore, this means that, starting June 7, commercial calls can only be made with geographic numbers , numbers assigned specifically for commercial communications, or from 800 and 900 numbers. This way, users will be able to more clearly identify when it is a commercial call . Furthermore, the 800 and 900 prefixes are no longer restricted exclusively to receiving calls, but can also be used to make calls.

How many spam calls are blocked per day in Spain?

Despite the existence of laws and various ways to prevent phone spam , the Ministry for Digital Transformation and Public Service reveals in the aforementioned statement that "they are blocking an average of 235,000 calls and 10,000 SMS messages per day."

Óscar López, Minister for Digital Transformation and Public Service, states that, "in the first two months since this Plan came into effect, operators have already blocked 14 million fraudulent calls ." "The Government has addressed a problem that was exponential. This data shows that the measures are working, we are improving citizen protection and giving them tools to improve their security."

A new measure will be implemented in the coming months.

The Ministry for Digital Transformation and Public Service indicates that the next measure to come into effect will be the creation of an official database containing the alphanumeric codes used by companies and public administrations as identifiers in SMS messages . Due to its technical complexity, this measure will be implemented 15 months after the publication of the ministerial order.

"This database, which will be managed by the National Markets and Competition Commission (CNMC), will allow these identifiers to be registered and verified. This will ensure the authenticity of communications , protect the identity of legitimate entities, and facilitate the detection and blocking of impersonation attempts," the Ministry adds.

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