Cut down on spam calls and texts with a free service.
You register a domain name. The next day you get inundated with texts for logo services and annoying calls about website development services.
You can thank services that sell Whois data for cheap for these annoying calls and texts.
One way to cut down on this is to use Whois privacy. Another way is free and still lets you receive good phone calls, such as calls from someone who wants to buy your domain name: use Google Voice.
Google Voice is a free service that provides a phone number that you can forward to your existing phone number. It also has two call screening features that can eliminate most of these spam calls and texts, and a third that stops them from bothering you throughout the day.
After you create your Google Voice number you need to do three things.
1. Use it as the number in Whois for all contact types on any new domain registrations.
2. Go into the Google Voice options and select “Screen Calls”
This makes callers state their name before the call is forwarded to your cell phone. Robocalls have a difficult time with this and you can also screen for telemarketers.
3. Go into the Google Voice options and select “Filter Spam”
The purpose of this is self-explanatory.
There’s a fourth step you can take if you don’t plan to use the number for anything else. Turn on Do Not Disturb under the options
This will forward all calls directly to voicemail. You can still review voicemails to make sure you don’t miss any important calls.
Unfortunately, if you’ve been registering domains for a while then your number has probably already been sold a bunch. But changing your phone number to Google Voice for future registrations should reduce these annoying messages.
Brian says
As I recall, Google voice is only available to people located in the US and you must have a US number to activate the service.
John Kenney says
Good tip. Thanks.
mr800king says
Been using this service for 7 years now and it works perfectly. That’s the number on every domain I have. Best filter ever!
Eric Lyon says
I generally just screen all calls. if it’s important, they leave a message, if it’s a telemarketer/salesman, they hang-up, if it’s an automated computer dialer, the message they leave is purged as soon as I hear the voice/pitch or complete silence on the recording. 🙂
bloggersideasblog says
I personally love Google Voice very much
Robert says
Been using this for years. Another tip to add is to enable the “Google Voice player in mail” so that you don’t even have to leave your gmail inbox to listen to the voicemail (which will mostly be SEO spam and IRS scams anyway)
Nikhil Shah says
Is there a smartphone app for Google voice?
Cy says
Thanks Andrew.
Outstanding resource. Activated, we’ll see how it goes.
Jean Guillon says
We don’t have the chance to be able to use such service in France. We have a service named “bloctel” which is not (yet ?) efficient.