I hate talking on the phone and try to avoid it if at all possible. I especially dislike getting phone calls from numbers I don’t recognize, because I don’t know if I should pick up or not. About two and a half years ago I wrote about “whitelisting” phone calls as a way to avoid unsolicited marketing calls. I didn’t know this technology had made it into the mainstream until I bought the HTC Touch Windows Mobile phone. I purchased Spb Phone Suite call management software from Spb Software House as an add-on to Windows Mobile, and along came whitelisting. The “ah-ha” moment for me came when I realized that I could use phone profiles and whitelisting to only allow certain callers to ring my phone.

Here’s how it works.

1. Set up a calling profile in Spb Phone Suite.
   I have multiple calling profiles set up through Spb Phone Suite. One profile is for work. I don’t want to receive calls while I am there, unless it is an emergency. All sounds for text messaging is turned off, but phone calls are left at full volume.

   With the “work” profile active, I used Spb’s call filtering functionality to reject all calls sent to my phone except those on my whitelist.

   

2. Go to Settings on your Windows Mobile device.
   
3. Go to the Spb Phone Suite settings.
   
4. Go to the Call Filtering options.
   
5. Add contacts to your whitelist.
   Adding numbers to the whitelist for the work profile was easy. I tapped the “Add” button and selected my contacts from my address book. I have my alarm company, Starbuck, and Stilts on the list.

   

Whitelisting works like a champ. Calls from other people flash briefly on the display and then go directly to voice mail. Spb also allows me to send these callers a text message, but I have yet to set that up. The cool thing about whitelisting + profiles is that you can allow or deny the same number depending on your preference.

Spb Phone Suite is $20, and the whitelisting functionality is worth that price alone.