FREE Call Blockers will be available for Lincolnshire residents to protect vulnerable people from fraud in the coming months
FREE call blockers to protect vulnerable people in Lincolnshire from scams and frauds will be given out in the coming months.
The 100 call blockers have been obtained by the Police and Crime Commissioner in the continued fight against the menace of criminals swindling people out of their life savings.
The units have been paid for using Proceeds of Crime money and the PCC’s office will be working with the Safer Together Team, victim support groups, Trading Standards and Lincolnshire Police to install them in the homes of those who have been the target of frauds and scams.
The trueCall machines lets calls from friends and family straight through, blocks unwelcome callers, and asks unrecognised callers to identify themselves before it puts them through.
Staff at trueCall have been working with the Government and the National Trading Standards Scams team to protect vulnerable people from nuisance and scam calls. The company says more than two million nuisance calls have been blocked in the last five years – with an estimated 2,140 scams prevented.
It is even possible to manage and control the trueCall unit online through a personal Internet Control Panel which allows residents of their family and carers to view a log of all incoming and outgoing calls, edit trusted callers list and change configuration settings.
PCC Marc Jones: “My deputy has been at the vanguard of both highlighting and combatting this issue for several years and I am delighted we have been able to secure these call blockers as one more step to protect our communities.
“We know how truly terrible it is for some of our residents who can be receiving tens of these calls in a single day. I even took the MP for Lincoln Karl McCartney and Home Secretary Priti Patel to visit an elderly couple who had been suffering this way to highlight to them the seriousness of the issue and hand them personally a call blocker.”
The new call blockers project is the latest step in a series of activities by the office to tackle fraud and scams.
Deputy PCC Stuart Tweedale has taken a lead role in raising raise the profile of scams and fraud and has become o a key influencer at a national level in this field.
A special programme created and designed by the Deputy PCC in conjunction with Trading Standards and police colleagues – designed to help school children understand and spot scams – has now been rolled out across the UK.
Work on creating a similar programme aimed at university and college students is now being developed and is supported by UK Finance - the trade association for the UK banking and financial services sector.