Technologies

I Found the Only Fix for Scam Calls That Actually Works

Yes, you can actually silence those annoying calls without changing your number.

Nobody likes spam calls. There is nothing quite as infuriating as being interrupted in the middle of dinner just to hear a pitch for car insurance, a useless survey, or ten seconds of dead air. It feels like an unavoidable part of owning a phone, but you don’t actually have to stand by and let “Scam Likely” ruin your afternoon.

The good news is that you don’t have to just accept these interruptions as a fact of life. You can actually shut them down with one remarkably simple solution. Imagine never having to deal with a mystery number ever again; it’s the kind of digital peace everyone has wanted since the first telemarketer picked up a headset.

We’ve got the exact details on how to banish these calls once and for all. If you’re ready to stop being a target for every scammer with an autodialer, here is the one move you need to make to reclaim your phone.

For more, here are five signs your information is on the dark web and seven tips to keep your phone secure.

The number of scam calls can’t be that bad, can it?

It sounds like I’m being overly dramatic, but everyone I know is dealing with scam calls. It’s not just anecdotal: Voice security company Hiya has numbers to back it up.

Based on an analysis of 221 billion phone calls made during 2023 and surveys of thousands of people, US consumers received an average of eight spam calls per week, Hiya found. Of those who reported falling for scams, the average amount of money lost was $2,257, a 527% increase over the previous year.

Money-grabbing schemes aren’t the only issue. AI is being used to impersonate influential people on calls to sway behavior. In this US election year, the Federal Communications Commission has already banned AI-powered robocalls following an incident where a Texas company created a robocall impersonating President Joe Biden telling Democrats not to vote in the New Hampshire primary; the FCC proposed a $6 million fine for the incident.

So what’s being done to reduce scam calls?

In 2021, the FCC mandated that a technology called Stir/Shaken be adopted by every major voice provider in the US. It requires them to verify where calls originate to accurately identify them for Caller ID. Congress has also passed legislation aimed at making the carriers track their anti-robocall efforts.

In December 2023, the FCC adopted new rules to add teeth to its existing policies by making it more difficult for telemarketers to blast unwanted calls and texts to consumers.

The problem is that these technologies and regulations designed to mitigate scam calls are not adequate.

Margot Saunders, senior counsel at the National Consumer Law Center, reiterated this fact. “We have been maintaining for some time that Stir/Shaken is not working to ensure accurate caller ID (which is all it is designed to do), because voice service providers are able to rent thousands of phone numbers to telemarketers and scammers that allow the callers to technically comply with Stir/Shaken without revealing meaningful or accurate caller ID,” Saunders said. “The numbers of unwanted calls are about the same as they have been for years.”

Although Saunders believes the FCC’s December 2023 change will make a big difference in the number of telemarketing calls, “it does not go into effect until early 2025, and it will take a while for the litigation to have a beneficial impact,” she said. “Most telemarketing calls are made on behalf of US corporations, and only the threat of costly litigation is likely to reduce these calls.”

You know where this is going with unwanted calls

You can do all sorts of things to try to reduce spam calls, from installing third-party call screening apps to activating scam blocking services offered by your phone’s maker or wireless carriers — some of which require an extra fee, making that “solution” even more painful.

The FCC takes a different approach to dealing with spam calls. It relies more on what you shouldn’t do and less on what scam-blocking services may be able to do.

Don’t assume that a Caller ID number shown with a local prefix is actually coming from your area.
Don’t reply to a caller or recording asking you to press a button or answer questions. Don’t answer “Yes.”
Never believe someone from an unknown number who claims to represent a company or government agency — hang up and call a publicly accessible number to verify the request is legitimate. The IRS, for example, said it usually contacts taxpayers through regular mail and not through a phone call or text message.

Don’t answer your phone. That’s it. That’s the answer.

So how do you know that a call is suspicious? Easy: Assume they all are.

Unless the Caller ID identifies a person in your phone’s contacts list, or you recognize the number (does anyone memorize phone numbers anymore?), assume the call is a scammer.

Just answering a suspicious call with “Hello” can open the floodgates for more scam calls because that tells the scammer there’s a human behind your number and, even more importantly, that this human answers their phone. The number may then be sold to other companies.

That’s a nihilistic approach to phone calls, I know. The volume of robocalls is so high that an incoming call is more likely to be spam. As I said, scammers have ruined phone calls.

Send calls to voicemail

So the solution is to just ignore every call? What about your doctor’s office calling you back to schedule a checkup — do you need to add every phone number and extension they use to your contacts? What if a friend’s phone battery dies and they use someone else’s phone to call you to get a ride? Won’t important calls be ignored?

There’s a narrow ray of light in the telephony darkness. Unless the call is from someone you know, let it go straight to voicemail. The best method is to let it ring, since even actively declining the call might be enough to alert scammers they have a live number. On the iPhone and Android, press the Sleep/Wake button once to stop it ringing on your end — the caller will continue to hear rings until the call is automatically sent to voicemail.

With voicemail on most phones, you can see a list of pending messages, often with a rough voice transcription for each one. I can tell at a glance that the unknown callers leaving 4-second messages are most likely scammers, and anything longer than that I can skim without listening to the full message.

You can even bypass the disruption of getting the call. On the iPhone, go to Settings > Phone > Silence Unknown Callers and turn on the Silence Unknown Callers switch. Anyone not in your contacts, list of outgoing calls or Siri Suggestions goes to voicemail without ringing the phone. Android phones have a similar feature called Filter Spam Calls located in the Phone app’s settings, or a Call Screen feature, depending on the device.

You can also screen a call without picking up on some devices. With Apple’s Live Voicemail feature in iOS 17 and later, ignore the incoming call and then tap the Voicemail button on the lock screen if the caller hasn’t hung up. While they leave their message, iOS transcribes it in real-time, and you can break in and talk to the person if it’s a call you need to take.

On Android, Google Call Screen uses Google Assistant to answer the call, interact with the caller and create a real-time transcript. At Google I/O 2024, the company demonstrated a next-generation variant of this feature, which relies on its AI tool Gemini to listen to a call you’re on and pop up alerts if it seems to be a scam call.

Still, these features are unlikely to make a meaningful dent in the overall problem. “We believe these tools are not useful for several reasons,” Saunders said, pointing out that only knowledgeable and careful consumers are likely to use them and that the privacy implications of this type of live monitoring are potentially enormous.

“The best way to stop the illegal calls,” Saunders said, “is to punish the providers who originate and transmit them. This point has been made time and again to the FCC.”

Seriously, stop answering your phone

Look, I want to believe there’s a technical way out of this mess. Some conversations really are better over the phone, without the potential for misunderstanding via texting or the need to look half-human on a video call. As long as scam calls entrap people profitably, scammers will also ratchet up their techniques (like creating AI voices that mimic a friend or family member).

We can make it harder for the scammers to succeed by doing the simplest thing.

Just don’t answer your phone.

For more security advice, here’s how to protect your data on Wi-Fi and how to delete your data from the internet.

Technologies

AI is Changing How Lawyers Work — and Putting the Billable Hour Under Pressure

AI is reshaping the legal industry by reducing the time needed for routine tasks, challenging the traditional billable hour model, and changing how lawyers learn and practice.

Artificial intelligence is now used by almost 90% of legal professionals in the U.K. and Ireland, and it’s putting one of the profession’s oldest conventions — the billable hour — under the microscope. That’s according to legal software company Clio’s U.K. & Ireland Legal Insights Report 2026.

It found that among firms using AI, almost 80% said they can handle more work without increasing resources, while over 70% said it cut costs by absorbing administrative work once done by support staff.

As a result, AI is challenging some of the assumptions on which the legal profession was built, forcing firms to reevaluate how their lawyers spend their time, how they charge for it and how new lawyers learn the ropes. You can’t charge 16 hours for something that takes 16 secondsNick Rowles-DaviesLexolent Some of the U.K.’s biggest firms are already putting this into practice.

A&O Shearman has worked with legal AI company Harvey to develop artificial intelligence agents for tasks, including reviewing loan agreements and analyzing regulatory filings, which it says can complete in minutes work that previously took several hours. Slaughter and May, meanwhile, has rolled out Harvey across all practice areas this year, including for regulatory research and document analysis.

Billable hour pressure The billable hour is central to the business model of many law firms, but when AI significantly reduces the time lawyers spend sifting through and drafting documents, the economics are no longer so straightforward. “You can’t charge 16 hours for something that takes 16 seconds,” Nick Rowles-Davies, founder and CEO of legal finance fund Lexolent, based in London and Dubai, told CNBC.

About one in five firms that have widely adopted AI report difficulty meeting billable-hour targets, according to Clio’s report. Globally, senior legal leaders expect the share of work charged by the hour to fall from 72% to 44% over the next two to three years, according to a Deloitte survey.

Routine work is the most exposed, Rowles-Davies said. “If you’ve got standard documents and you’re just putting in detail, then clearly that’s an automatic process.” But complex legal work still requires human judgment, he added, particularly when interpreting AI output and determining the right strategy for a client.

Lawyers [are] telling us that their day is getting betterJoshua LenonClio

AI and workloads

Whether AI efficiencies ultimately make lawyers’ working lives better may depend on what firms do with the time they get back. Clio’s report found that 51% of legal professionals work evenings, but only 32% want to, while 22% work weekends compared with 11% who would choose to.

Joshua Lenon, Clio’s New York-based lawyer-in-residence, believes some lawyers are already seeing the benefits. “Lawyers [are] telling us that their day is getting better,” Lenon told CNBC, as AI becomes more commonplace.

“People are really looking at these tools and saying, ‘This is making work better.’”

Technologies

Trump’s diesel agreement with Putin accused of contradicting Russia sanctions law

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a searing statement that the U.S. easing sanctions on Moscow “plays into Russia’s hands.”

President Donald Trump’s Friday announcement that Russia will supply diesel fuel to the global market marked an apparent pivot from recent efforts to pressure Moscow to end the Ukraine war by targeting Russian energy exports.

Trump claimed the move, unveiled with less than a month left in an affordability-focused midterm election, would swiftly bring down record-high diesel prices.

But commentators and critics were quick to highlight contradictions between the new policy and prior efforts by the U.S. to clamp down on Russian oil sales.

Those efforts most recently included the enactment of the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026, empowering Trump to impose tariffs up to 100% on the top purchasers of Russian crude oil or gas, among other restrictions. Trump signed the bill into law just three weeks ago.

“Congress just passed a law giving Trump the power to impose new tariffs on major buyers of Russian oil & gas,” Scott Lincicome, vice president of the libertarian Cato Institute, said on X after Trump’s Friday announcement.

“Can America tariff America?” he quipped.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., a member of the Senate Ukraine Caucus, accused Trump’s latest move of being “directly contrary to Congress’s intent in our bipartisan sanctions bill.”

Peter Harrell, visiting scholar at Georgetown University Law Center’s Institute of International Economic Law, in an X post said that the relaxation of Russian diesel restrictions “pretty much proves the point that the Graham Russia Bill was not going to force the Trump Administration to increase economic pressure on Moscow.”

Some of the criticism crossed party lines.

“Through the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act, we gave the president significant authorities and leverage against China and Russia to bring Putin’s war to an end with a negotiated settlement,” Rep.

Michael McCaul, R-Texas, said in an X post. “Unfortunately, while I understand the desire to bring down diesel prices, I am concerned the lifting of sanctions on Russian oil will only fund the Kremlin’s war machine—emboldening more violence and destruction, as we have seen in recent days,” McCaul said.

The White House did not immediately respond to CNBC’s questions about the diesel agreement with Russia.

Less than a year earlier, the Trump administration slapped sanctions on multiple Russian oil companies in response to what it called “Russia’s lack of serious commitment to a peace process to end the war in Ukraine.”

Trump also had previously slammed NATO allies for continuing to buy Russian oil. In a September 2025 Truth Social post, he wrote, “the purchase of Russian Oil, by some, has been shocking! It greatly weakens your negotiating position, and bargaining power, over Russia.”

Later that month, Trump again harangued world leaders for doing business with Russia.

“They’re funding the war against themselves. Who the hell ever heard of that one?” he said in a speech at the United Nations General Assembly. “They can’t be doing what they’re doing. They’re buying oil and gas from Russia while they’re fighting Russia.”

Trump announced the diesel deal in a Truth Social post Friday afternoon after what he described as a “highly successful discussion” with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Under the agreement, Russia will immediately supply more than 300,000 tons of diesel, then another 500,000 tons in November, followed by 1 million tons “immediately thereafter” and 3 million more depending on refinery conditions, Trump wrote.

The Treasury Department soon after said that Trump directed the Office of Foreign Assets Control to immediately issue a “temporary general license to allow the supply of Russian diesel to the global market.” OFAC specified that the sanctioned transactions will be authorized for about six months, until April 7.

Russia seemed to celebrate the move. “Russia-US cooperation on diesel and energy will benefit the world,” an X account associated with Putin’s economic envoy Kirill Dmitriev said in response to the announcement.

But Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, whose military has started targeting Russian oil refineries, said in a searing statement that the U.S. easing sanctions on Moscow “plays into Russia’s hands.”

“Any easing of sanctions against Russia without a clear and lasting de-escalation agreement with Russia is an obvious weakness,” Zelenskyy said. “Allowing Russia to sell petroleum products is an investment in a war that must be ended, not prolonged.”

“We count on America’s fair support for our defense of life, for our defense of people in Ukraine – and on the United States having a correspondingly strong conversation with Russia,” he said.

“A strong one, not a weak one,” he added.

Trump thanked Putin later Friday afternoon for enabling “massive amounts of oil” to come to the U.S.

“We need oil for the world, and this is diesel, which is what we need, so we’re very happy to get it,” Trump told reporters before heading to Syracuse, New York.

The Trump administration has previously eased some Russian energy sanctions temporarily, though more narrowly than Friday’s announcement.

Earlier this year, in an attempt to stabilize markets after the start of the Iran war, the Trump administration issued limited, 30-day waivers allowing countries to buy sanctioned Russian oil that was already in transit.

But some interpreted the latest move as a more significant step.

“It looks like Trump cut a deal with the devil,” Jeremy Siegel, professor emeritus of finance at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, told CNBC’s “Closing Bell” Friday afternoon.

“It’s not a permanent solution at all. It’s sort of a short-term Band Aid,” Siegel said. “And cutting back on or eliminating sanctions on Russia for the invasion in Ukraine, I think, is a very unfortunate consequence.”

Technologies

The world needs Ukraine’s grain. Its farmers are running out of reasons to plant

Cash-strapped farmers have no incentive to sow for 2027 with exports remaining trapped, as analysts say commodity markets could “flip fast.”

Ukraine’s harvest season is moving from wheat and barley into corn, soybeans and sunflower, and farmer Oleksandr Chumak has had a strong yield so far. That should be good news.

Instead, after 11 years of growing a range of crops in the Odesa region of southern Ukraine, Chumak has had enough.

Storage facilities across both Ukraine and Russia are filled with millions of tons of produce that would normally be sent to Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Africa — but are instead trapped in the warring countries.

Russian drone and missile hits on Black Sea targets intensified over the summer and into fall, making it impossible to insure commercial ships. Kyiv’s retaliatory attacks mean Russian exports are now also stuck, further squeezing global supply.

And with fatal Black Sea attacks continuing into October, prospects of a ceasefire look slim, even as Turkey ramps up efforts to broker a deal due to the risk to global food security.

Chumak says that around 80% of his grain cannot currently be sold at a profit, and he is out of cash.

A collapse in domestic prices is giving farmers like him little reason to sow for the 2027 crop in the coming months.

“For the farmers, it’s very difficult because we need to pay taxes, we need to pay rent for land, and now we are not able to do this because we are not able to sell anything,” said Andrii Dykun, chairman of the Ukrainian Agri Council.

“The only crops we are able to sell are rapeseeds and sunflower seeds. But still, the volume is not enough… So why should we plant if today we have no profits at all?”

“If our stocks will be full, it makes no sense to do any farm operations in the spring because then it’s just a waste of time and money.”

PrivatBank, Ukraine’s biggest lender, told CNBC that it had disbursed 1.53 billion hryvnia ($34.2 million) in working capital finance to agribusinesses between June and August, more than double the 718 million hryvnia lent in the same period last year. Small and medium-sized producers account for 70% of its agricultural loan book.

“Funds effectively remain tied up in grain inventories, while farms still need to cover their ongoing operating expenses and secure financing for the autumn and spring sowing campaigns,” said Yevhen Zaihraiev, chief corporate and SME business officer at state-owned PrivatBank.

“We are seeing different strategies among our clients. Some agricultural producers are selling their crops sooner, even at less attractive prices, in order to maintain sufficient operating liquidity. Others, particularly those with access to storage capacity, are postponing sales in anticipation of more favorable market prices,” he said by email.

Ukrainian production of grains and oilseeds is forecast to increase to 85 million tonnes from 80 million tonnes this year, but carry-over stocks from the previous season are pressuring Ukraine’s storage infrastructure and logistics, Zaihraiev noted. Those facilities include long plastic silobags snaking across fields and towering metal grain elevators that are themselves increasingly vulnerable to military strikes.

“We are also seeing agricultural producers gradually revise their planting plans for next year in favor of oilseeds and niche crops, whose prices are less dependent on logistics costs,” Zaihraiev added.

Farmer Oleksandr Chumak said he will follow that strategy, significantly scaling back planting for next year, avoiding corn and barley altogether, and instead opt for crops which require less fertilizer — which is also facing a global squeeze following amid the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran.

Meanwhile, for Ukrainian farmers — those not currently being drafted to serve — the war with Russia is ever-present. “We are living and working in a place where any time you or your circle can be hit by [a] rocket or drone,” Chumak said by phone. “We are sleeping in beds with explosions 300 to 1,000 metres around.”

Stock release would ‘flip the market fast’

Ukraine’s agricultural sector has faced farm takeovers, mines and labor shortages ever since Russia’s full-scale assault began in early 2022. International bodies have struggled to preserve its export routes through various agreements, including the collapsed Black Sea initiative and the European Union’s politically contentious “Solidarity Lanes.”

Now, the situation inside the country and the consequences for global food chains are the most severe they have been since the war began.

Between them, Ukraine and Russia supplied the world with more than half of its sunflower oil, nearly a fifth of its barley and 14% of its wheat in the years leading up to the war, according to the UN. Ukraine is also one of the world’s biggest growers of corn, with China and the European Union among its biggest buyers.

Around 90% of Ukraine’s main agricultural exports typically run via the Black Sea. In August this year, its grain and legume exports totalled 981,000 tonnes, down about 58% year on year.

The risk is heightened by weakness elsewhere. Europe is expected to have a particularly poor corn harvest and needs larger imports just as its demand for feed remains high. The United States is also facing a weaker corn crop.

For now, better wheat and barley crops in Canada, Australia and Argentina, along with good harvests in the Middle East and North Africa, are cushioning the blow.

The continued blockage is supporting commodity prices outside of Russia and Ukraine, but the reopening of Black Sea ports would unleash a wave of cheap supply that would “flip the market fast… with little warning,” said Benoit Fayaud, senior manager for grains and oilseeds analysis at Expana.

A deal which restores Ukrainian and Russian exports could see grains prices in other origins decrease by a few dozen dollars, he told CNBC. “They have such big stocks it will be bearish for the market all over the world,” he added.

Prices for Russian and Ukrainian wheat, barley, oilseeds and other products have become so low within the countries that it has intensified the scramble to find alternative routes via rail, road and river, according to Fayaud.

But these alternative routes are “difficult and slow from both countries,” he said.

Ukraine’s Eastern European neighbors such as Poland and Romania are resisting a push to allow grain to transit through them — even temporarily — due to concerns about a glut destroying demand for their own crops.

Another option via the Danube river has been hampered by low water levels; and a key bridge out of Ukraine has been damaged. There are options to export via the Baltic states and through Georgia by land into the Middle East and Central Asia, but this can only cover a small portion of typical flows, Fayaud said.

Andrii Dykun of the Ukrainian Agri Council stressed that there was no alternative to the Black Sea routes when it came to pricing.

“It would always be cheaper for us, even for the farmers on the western border of Ukraine, to sell the grain to other ports from Black Sea ports because it’s much more profitable for the farmers than to sell it via the border to [the] EU,” he said.

“So without Black Sea ports, it will not work for us at all.”