MTS “Blocking Spam Calls” service: description, how to connect, how to disable

Date: July 9, 2021 | Updated: August 1, 2021 | Author: Moblie-man

Spam calls on a mobile phone are now widely used by “unscrupulous” banks, credit institutions, and simply various swindlers and scammers more often than ever. And what if your mobile phone number is “exposed” somewhere on a private classifieds site on the Internet or in some other way has become available to “third parties” who offer their own, in the vast majority of cases, services that you do not need.

Communication from MTS is

Cool! Sucks!

How the service works

Advertising calls, employees of suspicious organizations and scammers will no longer disturb subscribers who have . MTS checks each number trying to contact the service user against the current spam database. Big Data technology allows you to add to the list of unwanted contacts.

Suspicious calls are blocked automatically. The subscriber does not need to install additional applications, download large databases, provide access to his own contacts, or monitor the stability of the Internet connection. Incoming calls are instantly checked to see if they are on the unwanted list and blocked by the system. The subscriber receives information about the number of rejected calls via SMS message.

SMS from short numbers

Everyone knows that a message from an unfamiliar short number is rarely useful: either dietary supplements are being sold, or some elven bank promises to pay extra for the loan taken. But this problem is easiest to deal with - you can “ban” a short number or the name of a malicious sender that replaces it in one action.

How to block

Send an SMS with the text: off X to number 4424, where instead of X - a short number or name, for example, off sushi. An SMS with the text on X to 4424 will “unban” him back.

By the way, you can also unsubscribe from MTS mailings by dialing *111*374# + call.

Connection from MTS

Protection against spammers and scammers can be activated in several ways:

Dial *230# on your phone and press the “Call” button.
Go to the “My MTS” application, select a service in the appropriate section and connect.
Log in to your Personal Account on the mts.ru website and find the “Blocking spam calls” option.

The request will be processed within a few minutes, after which the service will be activated.

“Blocking spam calls” costs 1 rub./day.

MTS company invites subscribers to evaluate the quality of the service during the promotional period, which lasts 7 days. Payment will begin to be charged from the 8th day of using the option.

How to connect

Let's see how to block spam and start living without intrusive calls. The first way to connect is through your personal account. Log in using your username and password, go to the “Services – Available” section and find “Spam Call Blocking” there. After connecting, SMS notifications will be sent to your phone. From now on, the intrusive spam will stop.

It is also possible to connect through the “My MTS” application. It is available for smartphones based on Android and iOS operating systems. Download and install the application on your smartphone, log in using your personal account username and password, and enable the lock in the “Services” section.

The easiest way to connect is using the USSD command *230#.

Disabling MTS “Spam Call Blocking”

You can disable the automatic blocking option in any convenient way:

Disconnect using the command *231# sent from your phone.
Use the “My MTS” application, developed for iPhone and Android smartphones.
Go to the subscriber’s personal account and disable the blocking service.

The above steps will take a few minutes to complete.

Who sends advertising SMS to MTS

The situation when advertising SMS messages are received on an MTS number can be resolved if it is clear who exactly is sending them. Most often, such messages come from several src=»https://tarif-online.ru/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Skrinshot-05-08-2019-132106.jpg» class=»aligncenter» width=» 700″ height=”433″[/img]

mobile operator – most often these are informational texts, promotion of tariffs and services;
partner of a mobile operator – we are often talking about mobile subscriptions, products and advantageous offers;
advertising company - the receipt of advertising is used to collect a database of clients, customers and subscribers;
a company with its own base or an entrepreneur - messages are sent, as a rule, to the numbers of previous clients and customers.

On the one hand, regular messages with various types of information are useful, since you can learn about new products, advantageous offers, and tariffs in a timely manner. But if they become more frequent, become too intrusive, or irrelevant, you can always block them. Newsletters can talk about the weather, horoscope, exchange rates, etc.

Sending out informational messages should not be confused with real spam. It is sent:

financial companies - they usually call, but can also send messages, offering active participation in foreign exchange and other markets;
insurance and law firms – offer insurance, various types of legal services, and inform about favorable terms of cooperation;
PVC window installers are another common sender of messages who advertise themselves on a large scale;
construction companies or developers - offer repair work, purchase of real estate, construction, cottages, dachas, etc.

All listed senders are embedded in subscriber databases or use their own customer lists. These are not all companies capable of mailings and spam. Many private and public entrepreneurs and legal entities do this legally, since in previous cooperation, clients signed an agreement to receive information.

Advantages and disadvantages of the service

MTS “Spam Call Blocking” is a popular service. Subscribers have already experienced a significant reduction in the number of unwanted calls after connecting antispam. It is convenient that the service is provided to users throughout Russia, connects quickly and does not require an Internet connection. An additional advantage is the notification of clients about the number of rejected spam calls via SMS and the ability to edit the list of numbers trying to call the subscriber.

The main disadvantage of “Blocking spam calls” is that this option is not available on several MTS tariff plans:

Connect;
Online;
Tablet;
MTS iPad;
IoT;
Smart device;
Cloud;
MTS Auto;
Auto attendant;
8-800.

Some users are upset that the option is not free, but admit that the cost is low.

How to easily block spam calls from MTS, Beeline, MegaFon and Tele2

In order to effectively combat spam calls, it is not necessary to connect additional services from the operator. There is a universal method that will block all unwanted calls.

There are applications for iPhone and Android smartphones with auto-number detection. The best of these applications contain huge databases of numbers, which are replenished every day, including from users.

If your smartphone detects that a number from a database of unwanted numbers is calling you, the call is simply blocked . Caller ID applications can be configured in different ways. You can completely block unwanted calls, or you can make them silent, for example, so that you can complain about the number later.

The best Caller ID applications are Yandex ( iOS , Android ). and Kaspersky Who Calls ( iOS , Android ).

How does it work

To block spam calls, you do not need to install an application or download a spam database to your phone. The service works on all phones and does not require access to your contacts or an Internet connection.

How to setup

To set up and manage, go to the service’s Personal Account. You can:

view the list of blocked numbers for the last two weeks;
Unblock the desired number or block it again.

For subscribers who activated the service after April 28, 2021, there is a temporary restriction on blocking and unblocking numbers in their personal account.

Description of service

The number of annoying calls has increased significantly in recent years. Tired of advertising offers and unnecessary information. Fraudsters try to carry out illegal schemes, especially on behalf of financial institutions.

The service that has been launched can protect the MTS client without the need to install additional software on the phone. You should understand what it is and how spam call blocking works.

The operator has created a special database of spammer numbers, updated online. The list included advertising and trading, legal and financial companies. Robot calls will be stopped.
The use of modern technology (Big Data) allows you to track suspicious calls and enter numbers into the database regularly.
The subscriber gets rid of downloading data and connecting to the World Wide Web. Connecting to the service will lead to automatic blocking, which occurs after the number is verified if it is blacklisted.
The offer is valid for most tariff plans with some exceptions (Online, Tablet, Connect, Smart Device, Auto Attendant, MTS iPad and Auto).
The number of blocked calls will be reported daily.

The initial connection will give you the opportunity to use the service for free for a week. After seven days, the fee is 1 ruble per day. There is no test mode during the secondary connection.

Metric selection

The next step was to select an optimization metric. In our decision, it was important not to block calls from regular numbers, so we determined that the accuracy of the model should be at least 95%. Precision is the percentage of numbers recognized as spam class objects that the model predicted correctly. But it is important to block as many unwanted numbers as possible, so we select maximum coverage (recall) for an acceptable level of accuracy. The final version of the model has the following indicators: 95% precision, recall 94%. Now the model is on schedule and is regularly retrained to detect changes in the call activity of various groups of subscribers, and these metrics are checked so that they do not fall below 90% each.

Due to the fact that there are much fewer spam numbers than regular numbers, that is, the sample is unbalanced, the number of negative examples was reduced relative to positive ones (undersampling). In the validation sample, the class ratio was chosen to be real in order to have an idea of the quality of the model’s performance “in combat.” Also, the sample included only those spam numbers that were active on a certain date due to the fickleness of spammers: there are periods of active calling, and there is a period of passivity when they make several calls, rather to maintain the number. Sometimes numbers are blocked after a campaign and transferred to another owner.

The xgboost boosting implementation was used as an algorithm, since it gave the best results on the validation set. Important features for the model turned out to be: subscriber activity data at different times of the day, the number of short calls, and the breadth of the social circle. An interesting fact was that the telecom operator feature was included in the top features. In the graph below, we anonymized mobile operators and presented statistics on the use of their numbers by spammers:

MTS app Who's calling

MTS Who's Calling is, in fact, another type of caller ID. But if a standard Caller ID recognizes only those numbers that the user has entered in the phone book, then this application is checked against the database of thousands of organizations throughout Russia. If a spammer calls, the application will report this, and sometimes it will be clear what kind of services they are going to impose on you. If an organization calls that is not detected in spam, you will be able to see its name if information about the number is in the database. Read more here.

Launch into production

Another serious problem in classifying numbers was the difference in ideas about what spam is: for some, calls offering a loan are unnecessary information, while others are waiting for personal offers and choosing the best one, so the subscriber was given the opportunity to view the list of those who called him numbers with the option to disable those that are potentially useful for him.

One of the most popular requests from users for improving the service was to expand the information content of the SMS report on numbers blocked per day with data on call categories, for example, banks, medical services or real estate.

The first versions of the model were built on features collected over a long period of time, but we noticed that the model often does not consider numbers that appeared recently as spam, i.e. new numbers or those that began actively calling subscribers after a period of “silence”. To solve this problem, we built an additional model using features collected over a shorter period. It was not enough to add “short” features to the training showcase, since the training samples themselves are different: subscribers active for long and short periods of time are not the same.

Our future plans for product development include creating individual spam lists, taking into account the client’s profile and his needs, transferring the model’s work online so that it catches the peak of spammer activity that begins here and now.

Disabling mailings from MTS

If you are tired of constant notifications from the provider company, you do not need additional information, then you can start deactivating SMS messaging. Not all messages are useless, we are talking about informing personal balance and system warnings. They will be useful to you, even if they contain commercial and advertising content. To unsubscribe, select one of the methods:

Use your personal account.

The service is a convenient interface for managing and monitoring all connected offers and tariff plan on a SIM card. With its help you can launch and cancel services and contracts. Log in to the system using your account. In the main menu you will see the exact balance status, as well as the number of remaining package units. Now go to the service management section and the content tab. All connected subscriptions will be displayed here. Select the one you don't need and turn it off.
Use USSD code *152#.

After this, the menu for managing paid services will open. Select the second option – subscription control. The display will show a list of installed applications. Identify the unnecessary option and disable it. It is possible to turn off all additional content at once. Selecting sections and moving around the interface occurs by pressing the corresponding keys on the virtual keyboard. If your actions are successful, you will receive a notification from your provider. Permanently disable receiving SMS notifications from MTS, to do this, enter the code *111*374#. As a result, all automatic operator notification services will be deactivated.
Contact your nearest provider sales and service department.

Be sure to provide your passport to confirm your identity. Or dial the operator’s technical support number “0890” and ask a free consultant to disable the useless function.

How to disable SMS messaging on MTS forever

If you need to permanently disable MTS mailing, there is a reliable way. To do this, follow a few simple steps:

in your account on the mobile company portal, activate ;
redirect advertising to short number 6333;
when collaborating with stores, sellers and other companies, do not indicate a valid phone number (use a spare one, such as Beeline);
do not link discount cards to the number;
When placing your advertisement and resume, use spare or temporary numbers;
block the receipt of advertising SMS on the MTS website.

You can use not only special services, but also the banal blacklist that any modern smartphone is equipped with. “Digital hygiene” is also important, which requires careful distribution of the number on information portals and advertising platforms.