Getting lots of nuisance telephone calls is a concern for many people

  • BT has launched a free service for all landline customers to stop customers receiving nuisance calls called BT Call Protect.
  • BT Call Protect is a call-diverting service to prevent nuisance calls and is available for free to all existing and new BT home landline customers.
  • The service is the first of its kind in the UK and it could see up to 30 million nuisance calls a week (half of these coming from personal accident claims and PPI companies alone) automatically diverted before they reach customers.
  • To activate the free service call 0800 389 1572 from your BT landline or sign up via BT’s Call Protect webpage.
  • Once you sign up, it can take up to 24 hours for BT Call Protect to start working.

How does it work?

BT blacklist 

  • BT continually monitor for the worst nuisance call offenders and once they identify them, will automatically divert them for you. The service is turned on by default when you get BT Call Protect.

Personal blacklist

  • You can also create your own blacklist of up to 100 numbers, including the last call you received, by dialing 1572 or by going online. Future calls from those numbers will divert to your junk voicemail box and if BT sees that lots of customers are adding the same number to their personal blacklists, they will add it to the BT blacklist.

You can automatically block certain types of caller

  • Call Protect also allows you to divert particular types of calls: those from international, withheld and unrecognised numbers.
  • In all three cases, nuisance calls will be directed straight to a junk voicemail box (completely separate from your regular answerphone) so your phone won’t ring at all, and diverted callers will instead be directed to leave a message.
  • You can dial 1572 at any time to check the junk voicemail box for any messages the callers have left.