Cold calls - who’s calling me and how to report them?

Billions of cold calls are made to UK consumers every year, while research from regulator Ofcom found that in 2019 almost half of us received at least one such call on our landline phone within the last month. And some people received many more.

Older and vulnerable people are often targeted by the companies making these calls – with further Ofcom data revealing that nearly one in three nuisance calls and texts targeted someone aged 65 or older.

Many people are often confused as to how they come to be inundated with nuisance calls, but your contact details can end up on a list after entering an online competition or answering a lifestyle survey, for example. These details are then shared further by unscrupulous cold-calling firms.

You should avoid giving out your contact details where possible to prevent this happening. And you should also register with the Telephone Preference Service (TPS) as this means that companies are not allowed to make live marketing calls to you (unless you’ve previously consented to receiving them).

Get further advice in our guide on how to stop nuisance calls, or read on to see who's cold calling you and how to report them.

Who’s actually calling me?

Number spoofing makes it very hard to be certain who’s truly calling you. Our past research has found that nuisance calls originate from thousands of different numbers, as many cold callers regularly change theirs to make it harder to block them or take action against them.

Fortunately, there are a number of websites that can help to identify who’s calling you, so that you can decide if you should accept a call from a number that keeps trying to contact you or whether it’s worth calling it back.

One such site is Who called me?. Simply enter the number you want to check and if anyone else has reported it, you’ll see comments from them explaining what the call was about. Calls are logged on a colour-coded level with red marking dangerous numbers, orange meaning harassing, grey as unknown, blue for neutral, and green for safe.

You could also simply try googling the number - often this will bring up a webpage related to a business that may have called you, or other websites that may have also enquired about this number.

Types of nuisance calls

Nuisance calls come in many guises, from live sale and marketing calls to surveys and even scams.

According to analysis of data logged by Which?, the three most commonly reported specific nuisance calls were apparent scams, with the callers claiming to be from BT, HMRC and TalkTalk.

Meanwhile, research with call-blocking experts TrueCall found that a large proportion of nuisance calls (around three in 10) appear to come from regular UK geographic numbers. A handful of the rest came from mobiles or business numbers (such as 0800 etc), although withheld, international or unavailable numbers were more typical.

But while calls from regular numbers were the most common, this doesn’t mean that they actually originated in the UK. Instead, companies often use technology to provide a fake number, hiding the fact that they’re actually making the call from somewhere else.

How to report nuisance calls

If you’ve received a nuisance call, then it’s important that you report it so that action can potentially be taken against the organisation that made it.

Companies can be fined for making nuisance calls and, since December 2018, company directors can be held personally liable if their company breaks the law, making it harder for businesses to avoid payment by simply declaring bankruptcy.

But it can be hard to know who to contact with a complaint as different bodies are responsible for different types of nuisance calls. For example, complaints about silent or abandoned calls should be passed on to Ofcom, complaints about scam calls should go to Action Fraud, and recorded marketing calls to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) or the Telephone Preference Service (TPS)

Read our guide to the best cordless phones for Which? Best Buys and more expert advice.