Abusive telephone solicitation, voice or SMS spam: what to do? - Abusive telephone solicitation

Abusive telephone canvassing is characterized by the receipt ofunsolicited commercial calls. This includes, for example, companies who contact you to offer products or services, such as a telephone subscription, without your prior consent.

If you do not wish to receive commercial telephone calls, you can register one or more of your landline and/or mobile phone numbers (up to 8 numbers) on an official list against abusive telephone solicitation Bloctel :

Subscribe to the opposition list Bloctel

This registration is free of charge for all consumers.

Signing up on Bloctel also allows you to report calls that you deem abusive.

This registration does not allow to technically block abusive calls, but professionals will no longer have the right to call you to approach you, except in certain cases.

If you change one or more phone numbers, you must unsubscribe the number(s) and register the new number(s) if you do not wish to be solicited.

There are 4 cases where the law allows certain professionals to call you despite your registration on Bloctel. These are calls from:

• institutes of study or polling,
• non-profit associations,
• professionals for the sale of newspapers, periodicals or magazines,
• companies with whom you have an ongoing contractual relationship. These companies can call you if you are a customer at home and only if the commercial offer is related to your contract. This includes offers of products or services related to your contract or that are complementary to the subject of your contract or likely to improve its performance or quality.

These professionals must nevertheless respect certain days and times to call you. Indeed, telephone canvassing is only allowed monday to friday, 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and 2 p.m. to 8 p.m. It is, however, forbidden on Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays.

Moreover, it is forbidden for the same professional or a person acting on his behalf to approach you or to try to approach you by phone more than 4 times during a period of 30 calendar days.

If you refuse to canvass during the 1^er call, the professional or the person acting on his behalf has the obligation to no longer contact you for a period of at least 60 days from your refusal.

The trader or the person acting on his behalf shall be liable to an administrative fine in the amount of €75,000(if it is a natural person) or €375,000(if it is a legal person).

At the beginning of each phone call, the professional must also give you the following information:

• His identity or the identity of the person on whose behalf he is calling
• The commercial nature of his appeal.

This information must be given to you in a clear, precise and understandable manner.

Without this information, the trader may be liable to a fine of up to €15,000.

The professional's telephone number must also be displayed or face a fine of up to €375,000. So he cannot don't reach you on a hidden number.

The telephone canvassing in insurance is governed by strict rules. Insurers must first obtain your consent to continue the call and stop the conversation if you are not interested. There must be a 24-hour delay before signing a contract. Sales cannot be made on the first call. Calls must be recorded and kept for 2 years.

Commercial canvassing platforms can no longer call you from numbers starting with 06 or 07 because they are associated in everyone's mind with mobile phones. They must use numbers starting with one of the following prefixes:

• For the city:
  01 62, 01 63, 02 70, 02 71, 03 77, 03 78, 04 24, 04 25, 05 68,05 69, 09 48, 09 49

• For the overseas departments and regions (DROM) :
  09,475 to 09,479

These numbers are referred to as “ versatile checked ». They are reserved for uses such as telephone canvassing or automated calls. This allows for greater transparency and helps you identify and filter sales calls.

Any contract concluded with an operator of electronic communications services (telephony, internet, television) must include information on the possibility of registering for free on Bloctel.

Without this information, the operator may be liable to a fine of up to €75,000(if it is a natural person) or €375,000(if it is a legal person).

You must report it on the Bloctel website by filling out a declaration form accessible from your personal area.

This registration is free of charge for all consumers.

Your declaration is sent to the departmental services of the DGCCRF: titleContent who shall carry out such investigations as they deem necessary.

If you continue to receive abusive calls despite the steps you have taken to block them and unsubscribe from them, you may consider reporting them to the DGCCRF: titleContent or Cnil: titleContent.

To do this, you can use Signal Conso:

Signal Conso: report a problem with a professional