A new service has been launched to help people protect themselves and vulnerable relatives and friends from telephone harassment.
The Call Prevention Registry (CPR) is using prime-time advertising slots to let telephone users know how to protect themselves from unsolicited sales calls and scams.
These are often perpetrated by criminal gangs who extort money from more vulnerable residents and sell on their details to other scammers who may be abroad.
An average of 10 nuisance or silent calls, including payment protection insurance calls, are received by every household each week in Scotland.
Lee Hare, spokesperson for CPR, said: “The objective of the TV advertising campaign is to let people know that there is a service and a solution available to everyone that will quite literally put an end to these calls at the touch of a button.
“We want to empower people once again to choose who they talk to and who they don’t.”
A technology trial is taking place involving CPR, Trading Standards, Tayside Police, Angus Social Work and Health Department and Angus Care and Repair.
It will see call prevention technologies installed in the homes of vulnerable people across Angus and the findings used to help set strategies for protecting different profile groups from nuisance calls.
The Call Prevention Registry offers two options to prevent unwanted nuisance calls. It will act for the customer when a nuisance call is made to the registered number.
In the event of any complaint, CPR will act on the customer’s behalf to have their number removed from the offending company, which must add it to its “do not call” list.
The CPR call blocker is programmed with 200 known numbers of nuisance callers and will block any call originating from any of these numbers.