Free Mobile: a “voice antispam” to block unsolicited calls

Almost two weeks ago, Free added an “anti-unsolicited call filter”, activated by default, in the Manage my telephone services menu in the subscriber area of ​​its Freebox customers. After the landline, it is now the turn of the mobile to be entitled to an equivalent service. But this time, it takes the name of “voice antispam”, as indicated by our colleagues from Univers Freebox.

It can be found in the My services menu in the subscriber area of ​​Free Mobile customers. Again, it's enabled by default, at least for some customers. It is specified that "this service will endeavor to block as much as possible nuisance related to unsolicited calls [...] mainly scam calls and other phishing". A few examples are given: "calls that make your phone ring once to encourage you to call back a surcharged number or even false messages from the delivery person who is supposedly trying to give you a package or the super winning lottery you don't never heard of it”.

Again, the concept seems rather interesting on paper, but we regret that no details are given on how the list is managed and on the numbers it contains. Questioned by us, Free had refused to comment when setting up the filter for “unsolicited calls” on the landline, explaining to us that it was “to avoid circumvention”. In the end, we end up with an opaque sorting system without knowing who is precisely in this list.

Note a subtlety on mobile: by default, calls deemed undesirable are sent to voicemail. Thus, in the event of a false positive, a "legitimate" contact can always leave you a message on your answering machine. It is possible to deactivate this feature and therefore simply refuse all these calls... without really knowing who they are, therefore.