Commonly asked questions

How many places does a number get registered with?

A dozen or so. Your numbers go on record with the carriers directly, with the spam-list companies those carriers rely on to decide the Spam Likely label, and with the caller-ID apps people install on their own phones.

How does this compare to a monitoring and cleaning service?

Most of the ones we've come across work through just one or two of the dozen or so services that hold the records the carriers and the spam filters read. Filings here reach a dozen or so of them — so a number that's been through it ends up on record in far more places than most of those services reach.

Which carriers does a cleaning reach?

Most monitoring and cleaning services advertise coverage on the big three — AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon — and for a lot of them, that's where it stops. That's the first of a dozen or so places a number goes through here.

Here you register with AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon — and with carriers beyond them: US Cellular, Spectrum, and Xfinity's own carrier network.

The list isn't fixed. We add carriers and services as we find them, and automate each one as far as it'll go.

Isn't this just a monitoring service?

No. A monitoring service watches a number and tells you what it thinks the status is — but most only watch a handful of carriers, not all of them, so a number can be marked spam at a carrier they never check. Even on the ones they do watch, they often don't do a thorough job. And the status they show you isn't always the truth: a number can show clean on the screen while a carrier has it flagged. Your numbers go on record with the carriers directly, and a check here runs a real look at public spam listings instead of a number pulled from a dashboard.

Why does this need to happen more than once?

A number that makes a fair amount of outbound calls will eventually trip a false spam mark, even after it's properly on record. Running the registration again is what clears that mark, so it's worth running again monthly — or quarterly, if the number does less calling.

How long does it take for "Spam Likely" to clear?

Usually one to two weeks, depending on the carrier. Most get back to you by email within a few days, then take another three or four to update their records.

Do I have to do this myself?

You still start it, but the filing itself is automated. By hand, registering a number with every carrier and spam-listing service is five or six hours of paperwork across a dozen separate places — here it's ten or fifteen minutes.