AT&T Call Protect Reviews

by Yodelingpuppet

Upon initial setup, ATTCallProtect asks to verify your phone number by sending a PIN number via text. I’ve tried a dozen times over the course of the day, and and I never receive the PIN number. I understand it could take several minutes, but hours, and still nothing? Days, and still nothing?
What a waste of time.
Update: tried again a year later only because I’m an AT&T customer and recently came across this on their website, so I thought I would give it another chance... Nope, still can’t get past the pin verification because they aren’t texting me the pin.
Here’s the thing: AT&T should offer the Plus upgrade to customers at no extra cost. I pay about $300 a month between Wireless, Uverse, and DirecTV Now... and they want to charge $48 more per year for this service? Ridiculous! Potential customers, do your research, this service is powered by Hiya. I’m now subscribed to Hiya, which is THE SAME SERVICE AT&T IS SELLING YOU, but I’m only paying $15 a year for it. AT&T is gouging you by tripling the price for no significant reason. If ya don’t care about your hard earned money, then continue to pay more than three times the price for the same product... or be smart and switch to Hiya.

by Soylent Bob

Have to rejoin every update I’m not paying for a useless app. And if it’s deliberately useless crippleware, I’m still not paying you because of this sham of a FREE* app that you’ve dumped on the world Still misses all the robocalls, because they’re spoofed CallerID numbers. The only option is to Block the number, which is generally pointless as the scammers are not likely to use it again. ATT can tell it’s spoofed at their end, but they don’t care, because they’re getting paid. We all know ATT tracks this so they can get paid. There’s no way ATT is letting BILLIONS of calls go through their network without getting paid.

UPDATE: ATT Call Protect caught the number even though it was spoofed as Unknown name and Unknown number! Unfortunately it’s part of an ATT-sponsored Affiliate Program, so ATT IS ACTUALLY PAYING THESE SCAMMERS! They have the number for the robocaller farm, and the ESL computer-simulated voice provides a callback number for the Affiliate, but ATT REFUSES TO SHUT THEM DOWN! Billions of calls every year translates to millions of dollars for ATT, and you know they’re not letting that much unbilled revenue slip by them! They’re not only allowing Affiliates to break their own program rules, but they’re paying them to do it, because they love the per call fees!
I guess they’d rather waste money on phony 5* reviews. They look expensive, too. They even try to dismiss a few of the common complaints (a huge hint that they’re phony reviews)

by HuckJR

ATTCallProtect rarely registers scam calls, and only 10% of the time does it display SPAM RISK when I receive robo calls. BUT...AT&T will block all robo calls by identifying the SSID of all incoming calls to my phone for $3.99 extra a month! Hey AT&T...you know these frauds are being perpetrated against your customers and you have the ability to stop it, by instituting caller-hardware filtering software. Do you do it for the safety and security of your customers? No, you tell them they should pay to to stop allowing the criminals your system knowingly allows to continue committing these crimes. That is aiding and abetting when you knowingly assist the criminal. Then to appease your long-standing customers who are disgusted by your lack of assistance in preventing the continuation of the frauds, you offer ATTCallProtect which makes the customer have to manually filter out ‘most’ of these calls, when your internal software would block the calls from going through in the first place. Sadly, after nearly 20 years with you, I think it’s time to look for another provider...merely on principal - even if the other company doesn’t offer anything more in protection from these menacing calls. Thank you from the bottom of my heart, but your offer to block these criminal calls is nothing but extortion when it is your service that is the vehicle for their existence!

by Media_frenzy

While it does well to block spammers and telemarketers. It should for the extra $3.99 a month for the PLUS features. However. It gets a single star because (1) it’s slow and lethargic. You think it has crashed or frozen but it has not. Using an iPhone 11 through multiple OS upgrades and running the most current version of ATTCallProtect . It never improves. (2) it’s buggy. I pay for the Plus service yet when I attempt to use some of the features, the pop-up says I must upgrade to the Plus version for $3.99. I click even though I get my bill every month for it. Then it says — you’re already a subscriber. Aaaaargh!!! Geez ATT. (3) and the worst of it all? It blocks more of my personal friends and clients flagging them as Spam. It seems to have nothing to do with my phone contacts list. If that were so, then my son wouldn’t keep being flagged as SEVERE SPAM. Only until I put a person’s contact INTO the Call Protect does it stop blocking. Well, it cost me potential work when a person called to hire me and later emailed me to say they went with someone else because he could never get me on the phone. I checked —- blocked! Again and again. I have no idea unless the person leaves a voice mail.

Not sure what’s happening with it but it’s a horrible app to have to pay for.

by Stingray2121

I’ve had ATTCallProtect for a while now and it worked good at first, however, for the last month or so, it’s been disconnecting all calls coming into my phone. It’s supposed to send most of them to voicemail and allow contacts to get thru. The caller gets nothing, no ring, no recording, no voicemail, just dead silence as if the call dropped completely before going thru. Every single time it does this, I’ve missed many many dozens of calls with no notice or call log trail in my incoming calls. Only complaints via email from the callers let me know they were all being dropped. I missed some very critical doctor calls due to this. I called ATT today and they opened a ticket. I thought I’d inform ATTCallProtect developers thru here as well, as this is a huge, very dangerous problem especially during this pandemic.

Also, the “save as contact” link doesn’t work either, so once you’ve blocked a desired call, you can’t add it to your contacts anymore with the “save as contact” link on the contact info tab of ATTCallProtect .

Overall, ATTCallProtect now does way more damage than good. I don’t know what happened to make a great app go so far downhill so fast, but I’d stay away at all costs for now.

by 35madscientist

So I’ve been getting more and more of these calls—all sorts of them. I read about what the FTC said to do/not do about them. So I stopped pressing whatever # to be placed on their “do not call” list. I decided to try entering the numbers into my phone and then blocking them. I have a ton of them! Why does my phone block regular people’s numbers but not these?! In the section where it shows my calls, answered or not, is where I had the #s, though I had erased them for a long time. It only said where it came from, supposedly (I apparently called myself a couple of times). A day or two after I made my “Robocall list”, I got other calls. I decided to just keep adding them. Only they were no longer showing up as calls I received. So the things that this and many well-intentioned apps have aren’t going to work. Maybe some premium features, but I have given AT&T a lot of my $, so I would rather not give more. These companies (?) are harassing us, and some calling are illegal. They don’t care if you’re disabled, elderly, or whatever. I wish a lot of people could get together and bring a lawsuit against all of them. This is ridiculous! I hope you can update your app and be able to get ahead of them in the meantime.

by DD In Georgia

ATTCallProtect is great at blocking telemarketers which I personally identify from calling me a 2nd time from the same number. HOWEVER, I regularly get calls which make it through, which show in ATTCallProtect as “extreme threat” level telemarketers. Obviously, this threat rating and classification is the result of many reports from other users. YET ATTCallProtect LETS THE CALL THROUGH ANYWAY!!???!!!?!!! There is no option to block all known telemarketer calls. Why? To the developers of ATTCallProtect: You guys are collecting large amounts of data via ATTCallProtect. Why do you not use it to shut down all calls from all identified telemarketers? Why not give the user the ability to opt in to auto-blocking all telemarketers which have been identified as such by the user community?

Finally, I REPEATEDLY receive calls from the same scammers even after blocking them. The only difference is that they are “spoofing” a different caller ID number. I am certain that the AT&T network is capable of identifying the ACTUAL origin of the call. So, why not block the actual caller and not just the phone number which they are pushing into the caller ID data for that day??

Fix those two glaring deficiencies and this will be a 5 star plus app. Until then, it kinda doesn’t *really* do it’s stated job.

by Chiefchewy

I had ATTCallProtect on my phone for 6 months or so.. it worked so so for spam but it was free so I just dealt with it... then in November I started having people(in my contacts) texting me that no matter when they called it never went through.. even to voice mail. I checked ATTCallProtect and saw they were being blocked. So after unblocking them, i deleted ATTCallProtect thinking I solved the problem. But once again I had people in my contacts telling me they could not get ahold of me... so after a visit to AT&T who told me it was a hardware problem and I needed to go to Apple and then going to Apple and them telling me it’s an AT&T problem I’ve spent weeks trying to figure out what was wrong with my phone since none of them could.
ATTCallProtect came to my mind so I reloaded it on my phone and there sure enough the phone had still been blocking calls and the whole list was right there showing me who have been blocked in the last 30 days. So evidently even if you delete ATTCallProtect it continues to block your phone calls. Next stop AT&T to find out how I can get this stupid thing off my phone for good.

by AKE1919

I have been using this application for along while. I have found it to be useless! The results of calls are ‘hit & miss’ with miss being almost 98% of the time. Sometimes incoming calls are not identified by ATTCallProtect but when you open ATTCallProtect later it shows as ‘telemarketer’ which really defeats the purpose since it is after the fact! In other words it does not indicate as such when your phone rings and the incoming number appears on the screen.

Further: recently discovered that calls made from a landline private number with no caller ID, to mobile phones installed with AT&T’s Call Protect or Mobile Security Apps are blocked/displayed as “Spam Risk” and the landline caller will hear looped ring tones with no options to leave a voicemail! This is a serious issue in that in an emergency a landline caller will NOT be able to reach a mobile user ( I. e., a Chile trying to reach his/her parents) or leave a message. Reported this problem to AT&T via their support line as well as their ticket creating process which has been a great disappointment. They have not resolved the issue and the problem is still outstanding. Once these apps are removed from the device as well as AT&T’s systems, the calls can come through. My advice: remove both apps from your handsets until AT&T resolve the problem. However judging by their troubleshooting folly, and lack of attention or response, I am not holding my breath.

by Fief Puddle

So far ATTCallProtect hasn’t worked as I hoped. First of all, I couldn’t find an operating manual or explanation anywhere. So, use is based on best guess. Telemarketers still ring through, you just get a warning that it is a telemarketer. ATTCallProtect has completely missed one telemarketer phone number or they are figuring out how to get around it. Since starting to use ATTCallProtect my fraud calls have tripled. They don't ring through, but my phone looks like a strobe light because they just keep calling every few seconds. I want a way so anyone not in my contacts list can’t call me or anyone not in my contacts list would automatically be sent to voice mail except fraud call should be blocked in this case. These two setting could just be under settings in ATTCallProtect for those who want them. Also, you are going to have to answer the telemarketer call and find out who they are so you can fill out the information section. This defeats the whole purpose of ATTCallProtect . I answered one of these calls by accident and I now get 20 or 30 calls a day.

by Captcarl28

When they first came out with ATTCallProtect the free version was actually pretty decent. Once they added the option to pay for enhanced services the free one became pretty much worthless to me. So I tried another app called RoboKiller but it started filtering everything no matter what my settings were and became too difficult to get to work properly so I had to delete that one and it was a little complicated disconnecting with RoboKiller. Kind of scary actually. It was forced filtering everything for a while. I decided I would go with the AT&T app because that’s my carrier so I figured it must sync pretty good.

Once I paid them that four dollars a month or whatever it is for the enhanced service it works very well. Occasionally somebody gets through but it’s just a telemarketer using their personal phone and when we all work together to report them then pretty soon they will be blocked too! It’s really nice that it tells you almost everyone’s name as soon as they call. I’m not sure why caller ID doesn’t work like that automatically anyways but ATTCallProtect definitely tells you who is calling my name almost every single call and that was an extra bonus.

I’m running a business and getting hassled by telemarketers it’s just a waste of my time but I do need to answer sales calls so having an app like this in this day and age is essential.

by Dxflor29

I have a stalker who constantly calls me and I blocked his number but his calls come through when he calls me private. He even calls other people in my family plan. I usually just ignored the calls or declined but then he started leaving me messages. I called att for options but they gave me the phone number for the DO not call line. They also suggested the smart limits. What a joke. I had to research the help on my own through att online help search. Pretty sad that employees don't know about this option. But anyway, ATTCallProtect works. I blocked the number and now when he tries to call by blocking his number, it won't go through. I tested this by blocking some of my friends and asking them to call me private and they said the call wouldn't go through. One person said they got a busy signal. ATTCallProtect has saved me from having to change my number (which I have had for about 13 years). Thanks for listening ATT now tell your employees to recommend!

by Lord Kas

So I have had this for a while, I still get the occasional spam call but it does what it is supposed to do. My biggest issue is those nasty Text message spams, if they could upgrade it to include those this would be almost perfect.

ATTCallProtect itself is simple and easy to use and can give helpful information about who is calling you, when they offered the free trial of plus for month I absolutely loved it, mostly because of the free reverse look up and full caller ID.

Now for my biggest complaint the paid service.

What I find confusing is that the mobile security app subscription is also included in the monthly price (if I understand it correctly), (the vpn, breech alerts, ID monitoring, etc) but AT&T already provides those free if you have their most expensive package, so why don’t they include the the Caller ID, reverse look up and custom Call controls to those customers when they charge $3.99 to other customers to offer the same features.

So, essentially if I was to pay $3.99 month 80% of those features are already included in my monthly plan from AT&T. I understand that this service costs money but if they could offer it as a reduced rate for the members already receiving the a large portion of these services it would be a fairer price.

Also if you delete ATTCallProtect make sure you disable it in ATTCallProtect before you do as it will block all the calls to you phone without ATTCallProtect installed to control it.

by Derek49

First, notifications: if you have that turned on you get s whole series for one phone call. Basically once every second. Might be related to how ATTCallProtect identifies fraudulent calls. Not sure. But supper annoying when they keep popping on the screen.

Second, patience: seems like we, the users, have to train ATTCallProtect . Of course people perpetrating these robo calls have thousands of phone numbers so you’ll spend an eternity writing them up. Almost as annoying as the calls themselves. Not sure if ATTCallProtect has ever identified a fake call before I’ve logged it as such. With new trick of attaching a fake name to calls things might become harder as they are read as “identified call”. So, my patience is wearing thin.

Is AT&T (and other telecoms) putting this on the subscribers rather than trying to figure out how to simply stop this crap from ever reaching us? Yes, is my guess. Kinda like the “convenience” of bagging your own groceries (a labor savings for stores in reality) 😂

by HelloitsDerek

During my lowest moment of being a victim of spam calls I was receiving a spam call once every five minutes... all appearing to be from different numbers. How is this possible, I thought? I talked to my IT guy at work and he said it's probably a criminal spam operation occurring from a computer. The criminal can put any caller Id in that they want, so it looks like it's coming from a real person. My IT guy said check with your provider, so I did, and thus I was directed to ATTCallProtect. After I enabled ATTCallProtect (during the mass spam attack I was under)... BOOM I got one more call and then ATTCallProtect blocked it... marking it as severe fraud risk. In addition, ATTCallProtect also revealed the true identity of the caller which bypasses their fake caller Id. Do I still get spam calls? Sure, on ocassion. But ATTCallProtect significantly reduced it and will definitely let you know when an aggressive spammer calls you.

by FP Flag

With in a limited time span of using Fraud Protect ATTCallProtect was very slow to react to fraud initiated calls. As ATTCallProtect gains input from (?) sources notification to the user is getting a little better. However, the newest “fraud” calls are centered on the caller listed as “DEBT COLLECTOR” - leading the ATT customer to believe the call is credible because “Fraud Protect” did not FLAG it as a fraudulent call. These appear to be a new form of fraudulent calls focused on a “new scam” and “Fraud Protect” programmers or data input/intercept monitoring system is once again falling behind in the curve to protect ATT customers - especially the elderly that don’t have access to what’s new in the current cell phone scam MO. Actual debt collectors send a notice via the US Mail system not over the cell phone radio waves. ATT Fraud Protect monitoring system personnel should be “a lot” quicker in spotting new scams being launched over their systems before customers begin filing formal complaints and “all credibility is lost”.

by Favor-IsMyName

ATTCallProtect is awesome thank you AT&T for creating ATTCallProtect for your customers. Ever since the hurricane I’ve been getting a lot of unwanted calls from everywhere. Like Canada, Philadelphia, Texas these are among the few places that I’ve gotten calls from, trying to sell or said I won something. Grrrr these teller marketers just get on my nerves they would not shut up when they call so you can’t tell them it’s the wrong person or you are not interested in what they are selling. I just hang up on them. I had 90 block calls on my phone in less than a month. Phew, now I don’t have to worry about the midnight calls or early Sunday morning calls. ATTCallProtect does it all for me, it like having your own bodyguards..... tried of these disrespectful people calling you all hours of the night get ATTCallProtect for your phone. It truly gives you a peace of mind that when your phone rings it is for you and someone that you really would like to speak to. Great app AT&T 👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼😜

by Domenic DiFrancesco

Despite signing up for the national “do not call” registry, scammers & spammers & fraudsters would still be able to call me — that is until I downloaded the AT&T Call Protect App! Within 3 day’s of downloading ATTCallProtect, all of the spam, non-profit solicitations, and fraudulent callers were flagged and blocked for my review.
I have the ability to report any unwanted callers & phone numbers, as well as blocking them. What really makes ATTCallProtect a awesome is that it tracks reports from users who report a specific number and builds a database of reported/unwanted phone numbers to then protect other users of ATTCallProtect!
You retain complete control over who you call, who you block. Now, when my phone rings, it’s only a known contact. I’ve had ATTCallProtect for over a month, and it has blocked over 100 calls from suspicious/fraudulent numbers.
Give ATTCallProtect a try - you’ve got nothing to lose and there’s no cost!
I could not be happier with ATTCallProtect, I wish I had downloaded it sooner! Nice Job AT&T!

by MyyDcmbr

ATTCallProtect works as advertised and for what I want it for. I’ve read some of the negative reviews and I have to disagree. With the advent of VOIP it’s nearly impossible for any telephone to screen and block every scammer that calls because they just keep generating new numbers or spoofing good ones, but it does a fairly good job. What many don’t realise is that they will have to provide input and participate in the process. Every time you do get a call that is a scam/spam, report it and block it. I understand that some think it should happen automatically EVERY TIME, the truth is that the numbers have to be checked against a database of reported numbers. If NOBODY reports the numbers, then how is the company supposed to know it’s a scam/spam call (DUHHHH).
Now that I’ve been using it, I do see that many of the nuisance calls are getting screened for me. Some are being Flagged and suspect, while others are Autoblocked.
In conclusion, have patience with and report the numbers that don’t get screened and it will get better.

by Ezirydur

I posted last week that after I downloaded the update it wasn’t working. Support contacted me and today it is working which I’m very happy about! I’ve read comments here about dissatisfaction with ATTCallProtect and although I don’t have all the details it sounds like some think ATTCallProtect should take care of everything without any input from the owner which isn’t totally accurate. It will identify numbers to that are in ATT’s database which has been a lot that I’ve noticed. When ever I have gotten a call that is spam I then block the call in by going to the call in “Recent Calls” and select “Block” then open ATTCallProtect and block it there. If they ever call again it doesn’t ring but I get a notice that it was blocked. It’s been 3-4 years since I started using it and I hardly ever get spam anymore and if I do it’s a number that I haven’t got a call from before. Sorry for the long post but it seemed like some were giving it a bad rap because they might not been using it fully and correctly.

by AllMostDone

Big warning! Please make sure that you read the contract you are signing before you hit the agree button. Not only are you playing ATT a full term price before you get any service but ATT (one if not the biggest company in the phone business) could not even do this without bring in some unknown 3rd company. Let’s see if they can’t make it work or they “accidentally” sell all of your personal info you can’t sue in a class action lawsuit! They are glad to tell you that they are collecting even more data but doesn’t ATT already have you account info? Shouldn’t that be enough? Wait shouldn’t the need to collect data info be redundant? Oops, look some there’s another company involved maybe this company is collecting “your personal data” and selling it to the highest bidder so someone completely new can try and sell you that new trip to the Caribbean. NO THANKS! How about making it harder to spoof a fake phone number? How about allowing the end customer seeing the person who is actually paying for making that call (you need a court order and multi state corporation to get that!) But if you have a friend in the local police department he/she can have your physical location sent to him while you are driving down the highway.

by ArcticSheepdog

I’ve been using Call Protect for about two years now, and in all honesty I think it’s more of a Telemarketer Magnet than a Blocker. Over the past six to nine months the number of calls labeled “Telemarketer” has skyrocketed to literally a call (sometimes up to three) every other day. And the thing I find most laughable and frustrating with ATTCallProtect? The caller ID will show “Telemarketer”, which you would think you could easily route it to voicemail, or set it to automatically block it, but no, that is not an option. So when I was looking at the comparison between the regular Call Protect app versus Call Protect Plus, I saw in the handy dandy chart that the user can make real customizations in the Plus app.

So, I then upgraded so that I could set it to automatically block those pesky, never ending Telemarketer calls. But, alas! It ‘twas not to be. For if there is a way to configure ATTCallProtect thus, it be not in an obvious manner so that an oaf such as I might stumble upon it and avail myself of its mighty power.

In other words, it doesn’t work as advertised. And this is an app FROM THE TELEPHONE COMPANY that you would actually expect to work. Don’t waste your money.

by KELLYMDFLA

ATTCallProtect works great! Within days of putting it on my phone the insane amount of telemarketers, political calls, scammers, and unknown numbers have been blocked or at least flagged so I know not to answer them. I immediately manually block them. The message they get when they call my phone number is great and it really has cut down on my calls. Here’s what really makes me angry and here’s why ATTCallProtect received two stars from me. I have never had any other cellular service. I have the same phone number I started with waaaay back in the early days of wireless. Back in the Cellular One/MCI Wireless, the first AT&T, the buyout by Cingular, and the switch back to AT&T wireless and this is the thanks I get for being a loyal customer with seven lines of wireless service (with data) and DirectTV. They actually want me to pay $3.99 for Call Protect Plus? If they're not willing to give the Call Protect Plus at no charge to everyone, they should at least provide the service to those of us who have been faithful customers and/or give them a tremendous amount of business. There’s no excuse for charging customers for this service! They already get a ridiculous amount of money from me. I don’t think I should have to fork out more to them for Call Protect Plus.

by Albee9989

I gave it two stars because it seems to work fine once I go through the steps of answering the call to here the automated message and then proceed to ATTCallProtect and block the number. My suggestion is that ATTCallProtect have the option for the user to identify numbers in the users contacts as the numbers to accept and then when a call comes in not on the contact file match is either blocked automatically or given to the user to accept or reject and block.

As ATTCallProtect is currently constructed it is not much better than the manual steps a user can take to block a call through the iPhone features.

In my opinion for ATTCallProtect to be really effective it should be more automated and determine that a call is from a bot and block it. The calls I get come from random numbers and change to another number once I block it but are always a bot asking questions about either selling me or wanting me to do something. I would prefer to identify the type of calls I want to block and have ATTCallProtect screen it to block. Example: I could choose to - block all calls from automated bots - and ATTCallProtect would follow my instructions, block it and notify me it was blocked so I could decide if I wanted it on my do not block list. I would pay for an app which had these type of features.

by Lord Krath

After weeks and months of non stop calls from unknown numbers, Chinese, Farsi, and Russian language voicemails, and casual calls from people pretending to be my friend... I decided to give Call Protect a try. Since I've installed it I have seen an enormous drop in calls making it to ring stage and it's great. I have since opted to pay for the add on to micro manage some call types and the volume has fallen even further. Now only people that need to get a hold of me, do. I just wish ATTCallProtect offered a service to actually pick up and play a recorded message to the callers since spammed only get charged for connected calls. Love it. I hope soon this functionality can be built into our service rather than depending on an app plug in. I replaced my phone the other day and started getting calls immediately prompting me to get ATTCallProtect up and running ASAP.