How to block spam calls and enable DND on Jio, Airtel and Vodafone-idea in simple steps

Telemarketing and spam calls can be irritating and often waste your time, especially when you are busy in a meeting or waiting for some important call. The constant calls for credit cards, marketing, teleshopping or even fraud calls becomes a headache. Moreover, many of these calls are fraudulent calls from individuals posing as bank representatives, soliciting your personal and financial information in an attempt to deceive you. Anyone who falls for these calls gets scammed and ends up losing money.

While spam calls are a problem, ignoring them is not an option. You cannot keep your phone on silent to ignore such calls. You can also not turn on your DND mode of device as this may make you miss important calls from delivery companies if you are expecting any parcels. So what to do then?

Well to help you with that, The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has a special service to permanently block spam calls. TRAI has started the National Customer Preference Register (NCPR), formerly the National Do Not Call Registry (NDNC) initiative, to help people block spam calls. You can sign-up for this DND service to stop receiving all telemarketing communication or calls from selected sectors.

The National Consumer Preference Register assures that once enabled, the DND activation only blocks unsolicited third-party commercial calls and not SMS alerts from your bank, communications from online portals and services, third-party personal calling, etc.

How to activate DND on your mobile number

- Open your SMS app and type START.
- Now send this message to 1909.
- Your service provider will send you a list of categories e.g. Banking, hospitality and others with their code.
- Reply with the code for the category which you want to block. Here are some codes you can select to restrict calls from a certain category, such as real estate, education, health, etc.

• FULLY BLOCK for All Categories (Block)
• BLOCK 1 for Banking/Insurance/Credit cards/Financial products
• BLOCK 2 for Real Estate
• BLOCK 3 for Education-Related Spams
• BLOCK 4 for Health
• BLOCK 5 for Consumer goods/automobiles/Entertainment/IT
• BLOCK 6 for Communication/Broadcasting
• BLOCK 7 for Tourism and Leisure
• BLOCK 8 for Food and Beverages
• Send the codes to 1909 and you're free from unwanted calls.

- Your telecom service provider will revert you a message confirming your request.
- The DND service will start within 24 hours.

You can also activate DND services through your telecom service operators. To register DND on Jio, Airtel, Vodafone here is a step-by-step guide.

How to activate DND on Jio

- Open MyJio app.
- Open Settings -> Service settings -> Do not disturb.
- Select the categories you want to block from receiving calls and messages.

How to activate DND on Airtel

- Visit airtel official site - airtel.in/airtel-dnd.
- Enter your mobile number
- Enter the OTP received on your number to verify.
-Select the categories you want to block.

How to activate DND on Vi

- Open discover.vodafone.in/dnd.
- Enter your mobile number, email address and name.
- Select the categories you wish to block from getting marketing calls.

How to activate DND on BSNL

- Send the message "start dnd" to 1909 from your BSNL number.
- The telecom operator will revert back with the list of sectors you can block spam calls from.
- Select the categories you want to block.
- You can also choose from mode including voice call, SMS or all.