A while back, AT&T and TransUnion introduced a service called Branded Call Display to help people figure out if a business call was real or just another scam. When companies signed up for this feature, their name and logo would show up on your phone screen when they called.
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Soon, people will see the reason why a business is calling before they even pick up. You won’t have to download anything or tweak your settings—it’ll just show up automatically.
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Instead of just a company name, you might see messages like ‘delivery service,’ ‘refill reminder,’ or ‘patient callback’ when a business calls. If you ordered food, you’d instantly know it was your driver instead of some random unknown number.
This update is only rolling out to Android users for now since it’s part of the same Branded Call Display system. But according to James Garvert, a senior VP at TransUnion, this feature is likely to become available for all phones eventually.
Why don’t they do it like other countries do? No fake numbers at all, guaranteed by the telco. Worst you can do is “don’t show number”, but the real number is still logged at the phone provider, so if there is something objectionable, the caller can still be identified by the relevant organisations.
Yeah, it is really strange how wide open they’ve left the telecom system in the US.