Sky has announced a new service called Sky Talk Shield, a call screening feature that aims to crackdown on unwanted calls.
This new service will be free to existing customers of the Sky Talk landline service, which comes included with the company’s broadband packages.
Sky Talk Shield gives customers a choice over the calls they do and don’t want to receive. The service can block callers before the landline has a chance to ring, or allow the user to listen in to see who’s calling before they choose whether to pick up the phone.
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Talk Shield is also able to distinguish between robot and human callers — if the latter is calling, the user will hear a recorded message reading out the callers name. The user is then able to choose between accepting the call from that contact for one time only, accepting the call and adding the contact to their ‘Star List’, rejecting the call and adding the contact to their ‘Block List’, or finally sending the call to their Sky voicemail.
Contacts added to the Block List will always be blocked by Talk Shield when they try to call, while the Star List will allow for the caller to be put through immediately. Customers are able to manage their Block and Star lists through their home phone or through My Sky online.
This new feature from Sky brings the company up to date with rivals BT and TalkTalk, which already offer Call Protect and Last Caller Barring features respectively.
Sky Talk Shield will be available to customers on June 9, though the company states a small number of customers may be given the option to start blocking unwanted calls from May 31 as part of the company’s phased roll out.
Are you going to use this new Talk Shield feature? Let us know in the comments.
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Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.