Time Warner Cable Adds Free Call Blocking Service

Excellent News for Time Warner Digital Phone Customers!

To ours, and those receiving a deluge of spam calls on a daily basis' delight, Time Warner Cable has finally added a call blocking option to their services. To access the call blocking feature, which lets you block calls from up to 30 numbers simply by adding them to a list, browse on over to My Services on the Time Warner cable website, and register to create an account if you haven't already. Then, log in and click on "My Home Phone." From there, you'll see a "VoiceZone" section. Click on the "Go to VoiceZone" button, and then browse down the list and select "Selective Call Blocking."

On this screen, you'll be able to enter up to 30 numbers that will not be able to reach you. Their calls will not appear on Caller ID, go to voicemail, or get forwarded. They will simply hear a pre-recorded message that says "The called party is not accepting calls from this phone number."

Once you're done adding phone numbers you'd like to block, hit the "add changes to save queue" button. Finally, in the right-hand column of the screen, you'll see a list of changes waiting to be saved. Click on the "Save" button to confirm the changes.

If you ever want to remove a number from the blocked list, browse back to "selective call blocking" and select the "remove" button next to the phone number you wish to remove. You'll need to re-save your changes.

This is a huge step forward as far as preventing calls from your most annoying phone spammers is concerned, and we're hoping other phone companies will take a queue from Time Warner's action.

Reverse Phone Lookup Services: You Have Seen them Online. Do You Need to Sign Up for One?

Update Published on March 5, 2012

Time Warner has really taken a step in the right direction since they decided to provide call-blocking services to their customers. Unsolicited calls are a nuisance to many of their customers, and it is great that the company decided to take notice and provide such a practical service.

Countless people receive up to 10 unsolicited phone calls every day. If you find that one particular number is a bigger nuisance than others are, it can be helpful to find out exactly who these people are that are calling you. Sometimes, these people have the wrong number, yet are trying to collect money from the people that they think they are calling.

If you are getting regular calls from one specific number, you should make sure that you know who is calling you. Even if you are a Time Warner customer and the company is blocking the calls, it is still a good idea for you to know who is trying to reach you and why.

Many reverse phone lookup services will provide you with information regarding landlines and cell phones. You can get names and addresses as well as alternate numbers listed at the same address. Many people think that they can just do a web search and find the information, but some people choose not to list their phone numbers in standard phone books. Standard phone book listings are the only listings that you can get online.

Reverse phone lookup services are able to get access to private listings databases that you cannot find anywhere else. This information includes files from landline phone companies and directories from cell phone companies.

They update their listings regularly and they do their best to combine information from several different sources so that the records they have are as extensive and thorough as possible. This way, they can guarantee that they have just about every phone number in the USA.

How do these services get their information?

In order to provide you with this information, these services have special agreements with the phone companies that allow them to have legal access to information that no one else can be privy to. Since they have to pay money for access, this protects general customer privacy. However, anyone with the money to pay can have access to many unlisted phone numbers, which may not be entirely fair.

The information is not publicly available online though and in local phone books, so that is somewhat of a relief.

Most reverse phone lookup services offer one time searches and subscription plans. Most subscription plans are very affordable and even if you only think that you will have do one search, chances are, a few months later, you will want to search a new number. It is good to have the ability to look up numbers whenever you are ready to do so. Most services will cost you less than a few dollars a month and you will save even more if you pay for a year’s access or access for multiple years.

Most people seek out free reverse phone lookup services before they eventually choose a paid service. Though some services claim to be free, for the most part, any free service is just going to be a glorified search engine. You can probably get the same results by typing the phone number into Google, Yahoo or Bing.

Though the website might call itself a reverse phone lookup service, it is not an official one with official access to private records. Some companies will provide you with a free trial, and these companies are legitimate, but there are no completely free reverse phone lookup services.

Some people feel that there is enough access via web searches, social network listings, white pages and other public directories, that they do not need reverse lookup services. What they do not realize is that most of this information is out of date, and that cell phone numbers are often recycled since people like to change plans and carriers so much. The landline listings and names are often several years out of date as well when you search public directories.

Another thing to keep in mind is that some online resources are wiki, meaning anyone can modify or change the information there. This is another thing that can lead to inaccuracy.

In addition to names and addresses, some reverse phone lookup services will give you extra information like family members that live at the residence and additional phone numbers linked to the address. Some of them will provide you with a full profile of name, cell information, landline information, address and resident stats.

Using these services is always easy. They are all located online, and once you have purchased your membership, you would just log in as you would to any membership website. You just do your search as you would in the browser of your favorite search engine, and you can usually look things up by name, phone number, or address, to get to the listing you are seeking.

Most of these websites will search for a number even if you do not have a membership yet. They will then ask you for the membership fee if they have access to the data you are looking for. Once you pay, then you just log in and complete your search.

Expect better results from more expensive companies

Though it can be tempting to go with a company that is on the cheaper side, if you want the best, most accurate data, then you should go for a moderately priced company.

Because these companies provide you with such useful information, many people wonder if the services are legal. The good news is that these companies are legal operations that provide information that they have retrieved through legal means.

You cannot use the information that you get from these services to make telemarketing phone calls or to harass the people whose listings you have retrieved in any way, but these services follow legal guidelines and it is legal for you to take advantage of them.