First off, add yourself to the FCC's do not call list: https://www.donotcall.gov/ https://www.donotcall.gov/ Once you've done that, they have 31 days to comply

First off, add yourself to the FCC's do not call list: https://www.donotcall.gov/ https://www.donotcall.gov/ Once you've done that, they have 31 days to comply. There's plenty of legal entities that still will call you. If you answer, be polite, play the dope a bit to get the necessary unfortunately, ask how they got the number, then request a manager (yes, they have one, they will tell you they don't. Be polite but insist). When you get the manager politely ask for the company details, then tell them to immediately remove you from their list. Their business can be shut down for violations so once they know you know, they take you seriously (FCC takes reports more seriously when more detailed). They'll probably hang up on you, this is okay. Report them anyways (do this legal or not. They can get their voip removed and whatever shell they're using. It's still annoying for them and they might remove you because you're not worth it) Second, don't answer phone calls. It is a practice to call, listen for a voice, then log that number as active. Text messages are more difficult. It depends on the service but you can probably text stop. The difficulty of blocking is that legit services will use the same number to text you verification codes (can we fucking kill sms 2FA‽) You can also sign up for a relay service (I use Firefox, but use whatever). I do this for email and every website has a unique email. Things like + for Gmail don't work and are filtered. You can also do this for phone numbers but it's more expensive. Fourth, aggressively unsubscribe, report to FCC, change settings on devices, and so on. Do this for your non-tech savvy friends and family. Get them to use services like signal that are privacy preserving, don't leak metadata, AND is easy enough Grandma can use. Install ublock origin into their browsers and some other privacy preserving stuff and edit settings. Get them to use Firefox instead of Chrome if you can. You need to do this to others because they will leak your information (most of my information leak comes from my parents. I even get emails in their names...) If you want to take a step further, get a scrubbing service like optery. There's a lot of shady shit so be careful who you pick. Edit: you can do a similar thing for mail. There is a $5 processing fee. Sucks, but sadly it's junk mail that keeps the post office alive (do not put "return to sender" unless it's prepaid. You need to give a reason otherwise your postal worker is just being nice and throwing it away for you. Don't create more work for them) https://consumer.ftc.gov/articles/how-stop-junk-mail https://consumer.ftc.gov/articles/how-stop-junk-mail