by Alan German

It’s 6:05 pm; now who is that calling? You’re right, it’s the duct cleaning company from India, or it’s the Captain wanting to give me that free cruise. I don’t get that many telemarketing calls on my cellphone, but the ones that do arrive are really annoying. So, currently, I am trying Call Control, a call-blocking app from the Kedlin Company.

It’s very easy to use. I hang up on a scam telephone call. I simply bring up the list of recent calls and tap on the listing for the call in question. I select the Block & Report option and the caller’s telephone number is added to the Blocked List.

The same app can also be used to block text messages. You know the ones – become mystery shopper, your credit card has been deactivated – and so on. On my smartphone, using the text-blocking service means using Call Control as my default SMS app. It seems to work just fine in this capacity so, at least for the moment, that’s what I’m doing.

The free version of the software advertises – amongst other things – Call Control Premium. The features of the paid version, and the limitations of the free version, are not clear. It appears that the paid version of the app uses crowd sourcing to identify spammers and add their contact information to a community blacklist. A user comment on Google’s Play Store suggests that the number of free personal blacklist entries is limited. So, for now, the ultimate utility of the free version of Call Control remains in question. The evaluation process continues!

Originally published: May, 2017

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