What Are “Potential Spam” Calls?

By Dan Ketchum

Key Takeaways:

• Major phone carriers use machine learning to identify suspicious calls.
• While the warning is just an estimate, it’s usually reliable.
• You can run a quick spam number lookup on PeopleWin, just to be sure.

You’re probably used to it by now: your phone rings — which can be a weird enough experience if you’re not expecting a call and you’re under a certain age — and the caller ID is a “potential spam” warning. With 3.1 billion spam calls made to Americans every single month (that’s nine monthly spam calls for every person with a phone), it literally happens all the time.

There’s a good chance you take the warning at face value, reject the call, and move on with your life. And honestly, that’s pretty much the right move. But what exactly does “potential spam” mean? How does your phone even know what a spam call is in the first place? And is there any merit to investigating further? Let’s open the lid on this can of spam and dive in.

How It Works

As you might suspect, your phone isn’t performing a magic trick to determine what is a spam call and what isn’t. In fact, it’s not even the device that’s doing the work — it’s your cell carrier. Some phones label calls with a high likelihood of sketchiness “potential spam,” others say “spam risk” or “scam likely.” 

No matter the label, it’s essentially an advanced, predictive form of caller ID, estimating the likelihood of potential spam from an unknown number based on that number’s behavior. Each of the major carriers partner with different analytics platforms to flag spam calls, but the underlying tech works in the same way.   

The Tech Behind “Potential Spam”

For this tech to work, your phone basically has to ask itself, “what is a spam call?” But how does it do that?

The short answer is machine learning. Basically, each carrier partners with a big analytics company (like Hiya, TNS, and First Orion) that maintains massive datasets of phone numbers. These companies use machine learning — essentially, the automated study of patterns — to identify red flags associated with those numbers. Here are a few of the things they tend to look out for:

• If a number makes tens of thousands of calls all at once.
• Call frequency, location, and how many people a single number is routinely calling.
• Behavioral details such as whether people report or mark a number as spam, whether synthesized voices are detected, and whether auto-dialers are used.

By processing gargantuan swaths of this sort of data, these systems algorithmically determine the likelihood that a call is, in fact, “potential spam.” But they use language like “potential” and “likely” for a reason — while largely reliable, potential spam warnings are, at the end of the day, a computer algorithm simply estimating that a call is spam based on a collection of patterns. 

What To Do

If you see “potential spam” or your carrier’s equivalent message, your best bet is to reject the call. If you’re relatively certain that the call is spam — some additional red flags include sketchy voicemails or tons of unknown calls from the same area code all of a sudden — use your phone’s built-in block feature to avoid future nuisances. 

If you want to be doubly sure before you block, you can also do a one-step spam number lookup with PeopleWin (more on that later). But even if you plan on doing a little more digging, don’t pick up “potential spam” calls unless you’re certain beyond a shadow of a doubt that they’re mislabeled. Most people have a pretty solid golden rule: if it is important, they’ll leave a message. (And not a text-to-speech scam message from the fake IRS, either.)

Extra Steps

Both Android and iOS phones have features that work in tandem with your cell provider’s analytics services to combat potential spam. You can take a deeper dive into your phone’s caller ID and spam settings to enable features like automatically silencing spam calls or filtering spam calls. If you choose to filter spam calls, your phone will automatically reject them and refrain from showing notifications for “potential spam” missed calls or voicemails, but will still log them in your call history if you want to peek at the details later. Spam call detection is enabled by default on most phones, but you can also disable or customize it manually using these settings if you want.  

To reduce potential spam call frequency,  you can head over to the National Do Not Call Registry, a free service of the Federal Trade Commission that helps prevent you from receiving telemarketing calls (which aren’t always a scam, but can be pretty spammy).

Frequently Asked Questions

Let’s get a little deeper than Googling “what is a spam call” with some of the most commonly searched questions about the “potential spam” warning. 

Why am I suddenly getting more spam calls?

Most likely, your number has appeared in some form of public record, been harvested from a website, or was leaked as part of a data breach — any of these can put your digits in the hands of scammers.

What happens if I answer a spam call?

While spam calls come in all sorts of different varieties (and so do the scams they perpetrate), answering a spam call is basically like opening up your door and letting the scammer get a foot in. 

Worst-case scenario: You fall victim to a scam, in which case the criminal on the other end may get a hold of your valuable private information, money, or both. Best-case scenario: Your number may be flagged by scammers as a potential target — someone likely to pick up the call — thus leading to more “potential spam” coming your way.

How reliable is the “potential spam” warning? 

According to cybersecurity company Norton, “Calls marked ‘spam risk’ are rarely legitimate. However, if a legitimate business or individual has irregular calling habits, it’s possible that a service might mistakenly mark their number as spam.”

Should I block “potential spam”?

Yes, if you’re certain the call is spam. Not only will it help save you from future hassles (Americans waste about 234 million hours on spam calls per year), but blocking adds the number to existing datasets of flagged numbers, helping make “potential spam” warnings more accurate in the long run. 

How can I be sure it’s really spam?

Use PeopleWin for an instant spam number lookup. If you’ve got a suspicious phone number in your call history, just pop it in, and we’ll immediately cross-reference it with 3.9 billion historical records, 89 billion business records, 600 million court records, and much more to attempt to get a hold on its history. We’ll also give you a phone number reputation score, which can help you assess if someone legit is trying to reach you, or if you’re being targeted by some kind of telemarketing campaign or scam. 

As a freelance writer, small business owner, and consultant with more than a decade of experience, Dan has been fortunate enough to collaborate with leading brands including Microsoft, Fortune, Verizon, Discover, Office Depot, The Motley Fool, and more. He currently resides in Dallas, TX.