To be fair, I've not had one call since I've been on BT for the last 2 years that I wasn't expecting or didn't know who has been calling. In the main its your phone and if you don't want answer it you don't have to.
That is a very good point Behemoth. So often people make a phone call the number one priority in their life because it makes a massive noise and demands attention, much like a young child does. Naturally we give it attention because if we don't it won't stop bugging us to give it attention. Your phone is a piece of hardware so it never tires and thus can be an even bigger pain than a child because a child will eventually give up, I bet parents will disagree but theoretically a child has to sleep at least once every 24 hours while a phone can go on charge and never have any down time. I find that turning my phone off when my complete attention is required can be very helpful because I no longer have to worry about it. When I turn it back on I can phone people back and address what ever needed addressing. We should remember that people have lived for thousands of years without instant access to everyone so it is perfectly OK to go back to that when ever you need to. I for one always make my phone silent when sleeping because sleeping is a very important part of my life and I prefer not to be disturbed. It turns out that people actually don't mind that. I explain to them that I was sleeping and that I don't find it acceptable for them to interrupt my sleep. If they object I use the scenario of asking what they would do if phones were to disappear and they needed to contact me; you wouldn't come to my house and open the door, walk into my room and shout at me because you needed my attention; the acceptable thing to do would be to respect my space and wait until we both were in a convenient position to talk and then ask me what you needed to; so why not use the phone for the same purpose. If a person refuses to contact me on those terms I ignore their calls. If it happens to be a company I make use of TPS to let them know they are using my phone number illegally and hang up. I don't deviate too much from the sentence expressed in my first post on this topic. It seems to work, I don't get called too much. The other thing that popped into my head while writing this post was that I tend to use my home phone number to enter into any online forms, I never use my mobile number. I would suggest keeping your mobile number a secret from the rest of the world and only ever give it out to people you trust. It seems to be working for me.
