We all bristle at those annoying spam calls that we receive not only on our personal cell phones but our office telephones as well. Both our old and new telephone systems have experienced this irritating problem, and a new solution will help reduce the amount of these calls we receive.
You may notice on your office telephone and your own personal phones that many spam calls appear to originate from your number’s area code and prefix. For example, if your phone number is 214-555-1212, many of your spam calls will come from a number starting with 214-555. This has been happening with our SMU phone numbers, with spam calls coming from numbers “spoofed” to look like 214-768 numbers.
A new restriction has been applied to our telephony systems to put an end to these spoofed calls. Since SMU owns the entire block of 214-768-XXXX telephone numbers, any incoming call from off-campus purporting to be a 214-768 number will be blocked. If a caller is dialing from within SMU, the call will complete as usual. This will not affect calls you make from off-campus from your SMU phone number using your computer or the Skype for Business app on your smartphone.
We are excited to put this in place to help reduce these time-wasting calls. If you have any questions, let us know!
