L'équipe Texto SMS Gratuit
29 September 2026 · 13 min read
Introduction: 4.8 unwanted calls a week, and it's not your imagination
Your phone rings. A ten-digit number starting with 09, one you've never seen. You pick up: two seconds of silence, then a voice offers you an energy audit, a seniors' health insurance plan, or help claiming a "training account" you never opened. An hour later, a text message announces that a parcel is being held pending €1.95 in customs fees. You aren't expecting any parcel.
This is neither bad luck nor a personal data leak: it's a business model. For several years now, the annual surveys by UFC-Que Choisir have put the average at around four to five solicitations per week per mobile line, and the public 33700 reporting service handles tens of millions of fraudulent SMS reports every year. Mobile has become the preferred channel for cold calling because it costs next to nothing to dial and it's always in your pocket.
The good news: the French legal framework tightened considerably in 2026, and the filtering tools built into phones and carrier networks are finally effective. The bad news: most people pile up useless gestures (blocking numbers one by one when they change every day) and overlook the three settings that actually turn off the tap. This guide sorts it all out, item by item.
Three families of calls, three different responses
Confusing these categories is the first mistake, because the remedies have nothing in common.
| Family | Who's calling | Framework | What works |
|---|---|---|---|
| Legal commercial cold calling | Identified French company: energy, home improvement, insurance | Consumer Code, consent required | Written objection, Bloctel, report to the DGCCRF |
| Illegal / non-consented cold calling | Call centres, often offshore, in banned sectors | Punishable offence | Report to the DGCCRF + 33700 |
| Outright fraud (voice or SMS phishing) | Fake bank adviser, fake parcel, fake CPF | Fraud, Criminal Code | 33700, Perceval, criminal complaint |
A call offering you an energy retrofit isn't a "slightly pushy sales call": since the law of 24 July 2020, telephone canvassing for energy renovation work has been banned, except where a contract is already in place. The same goes for the personal training account (CPF), banned since 2022. A call of that kind is therefore, by its very nature, an offence — which radically changes your position.
The 2026 shift: opting out is over, consent is in
This is the most significant and least known change. Until recently, the French approach was opt-out: you could be called unless you had registered on the Bloctel list.
The law of 13 June 2024, aimed at strengthening consumer protection against telephone canvassing abuses, reversed the principle. Since 11 August 2026, telephone canvassing is lawful only if the consumer has given prior, explicit consent to being called for commercial prospecting purposes. This is the opt-in regime, the one that already applies to marketing emails and text messages.
In practice, this means that:
- A sales call received without you ever having ticked a consent box is, by default, unlawful.
- Consent must be specific: agreeing to be contacted again by an insurance comparison site does not authorise the resale of your number to a solar panel company.
- It remains revocable at any time, without justification, and the company must give you the means to do so at the very start of the call.
- Time windows remain regulated: calls are permitted on working days from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and from 2 p.m. to 8 p.m., never on Saturdays, Sundays or public holidays.
Opinion polling and press subscription prospecting do not count as commercial canvassing under this legislation. That's the loophole some callers will invoke: don't be intimidated, ask for the company name and the exact purpose of the call.
The administrative fine can reach €75,000 for an individual and €375,000 for a company. These figures aren't theoretical: the DGCCRF regularly publishes summaries of penalties imposed on energy and insurance brokers.
Bloctel: useful, but it won't solve your problem
Bloctel remains the official opt-out scheme, run on behalf of the State. Registration is free, valid for three years and renewable, for up to eight numbers per household.
What it actually does: companies engaged in canvassing must have their files screened against Bloctel before any campaign. A law-abiding firm will therefore remove you from its lists.
What it doesn't do:
- It doesn't technically block a single call. It isn't a firewall, it's a list professionals are supposed to consult.
- It doesn't apply to companies with which you have an ongoing contract — your carrier, your bank and your insurer can keep calling.
- It has no effect whatsoever on platforms based abroad, which account for the bulk of the most aggressive calls.
- It doesn't cover text messages, which go through a different channel.
Sign up anyway: registration is what makes your later reports admissible and documented. But don't expect a miracle the next morning.
The real lever: filtering, on the network and on the phone
This is where the progress of the past two years changes everything.
Number authentication (the end of spoofing)
Spoofing — the trick that displays a fake French number or even the number of a real private individual — long made blocking pointless. The number authentication scheme provided for by the law of 22 December 2018 (known as the Naegelen law) now requires carriers to cut off calls whose displayed number is not authenticated when they originate abroad with a French number.
Since the summer of 2024 for landline numbers, and progressively for mobile numbers through 2026, these calls are terminated at network level. There's nothing for you to activate: it's upstream filtering. That's why many users have noticed a clear drop in volume — and a shift by canvassers towards 09 numbers genuinely allocated in France.
Carrier options
All four networks now offer an unwanted-call filtering service, which you can switch on from your customer account:
| Carrier | Feature (commercial name varies) | How it works |
|---|---|---|
| Orange / Sosh | Unwanted call filtering | Database of reported numbers, on-screen warning |
| SFR / RED | Line security, anti-spam filter | Network-level blocking of identified numbers |
| Bouygues / B&YOU | Voice anti-spam filter | Warning or automatic rejection |
| Free Mobile | Withheld-number blocking and filtering | Configured from the subscriber area |
Check the exact wording in your customer account: these options are often free but disabled by default. It's a two-minute change that eliminates a good share of the remaining volume.
The phone's own settings
Both mobile operating systems have native tools that are widely underused:
- Silence unknown callers: numbers not in your contacts go straight to voicemail without ringing. Drastic, but be careful if you're expecting a doctor, a delivery driver or a recruiter.
- Spam caller identification: the Phone app flags heavily reported numbers in red.
- Filtering of messages from unknown senders: on both platforms, texts from unknown numbers move to a separate tab, with no notification.
- "Do Not Disturb" with exceptions: total silence except for your favourite contacts, during defined time slots.
If you're going through a period of intense solicitation (after a property purchase or a home improvement quote, files circulate fast), the combination of unknown-caller filtering plus visual voicemail is the most comfortable: you read the transcript and only call back what matters.
Fraudulent text messages: an entirely separate channel
Spam texts don't fall under Bloctel. The official channel is 33700, a platform run by French carriers in cooperation with the authorities.
The exact procedure:
- Forward the suspicious text to 33700 (free, non-premium rate).
- You'll receive an automatic reply asking for the sender's number.
- Reply with that number. The report is logged.
33700 also accepts reports of calls: send a text to 33700 containing the keyword indicated on the scheme's website, followed by the calling number. Heavily reported numbers are cut off by the carriers.
The four dominant smishing scenarios in 2026 remain:
- The held parcel: small customs fees to pay, via a form that captures your bank card details.
- The fake fine: a message purporting to come from ANTAI, with a link that is never on
.gouv.fr. - The fake bank adviser: a text announcing a suspicious transaction, followed by a voice call seeking to obtain your verification code.
- The health insurance or medical account: imitating Ameli's wording to harvest a social security number.
Absolute rule: no government body and no bank will ever ask you for a code received by text, or for your password, over the phone. An adviser who insists on getting a code is a fraudster, whatever number is displayed.
If a fraudulent debit occurs, two reflexes: immediately notify your bank to block the card, then file a report on Perceval via the service-public.fr website, which feeds into judicial police investigations. And if your data has been exposed, Cybermalveillance.gouv.fr offers a free assistance pathway.
Why your number is doing the rounds (and how to slow it down)
Your number wasn't stolen. More often than not it was collected with your formal consent, then passed on to "partners" — the wording appears in small print beneath the form.
The main sources:
- Online comparison sites (insurance, energy, credit), whose entire business model is precisely the resale of qualified leads.
- In-store competitions and prize draws.
- Loyalty cards and quote requests.
- Download forms for "free" documents.
Two habits durably reduce the flow. First, systematically untick the boxes authorising transfer to third parties, and never fill in a phone field when it isn't mandatory. Second, exercise your right to object under Article 21 of the GDPR: an email to customer service is enough, and the company must process the request within a month. If it doesn't reply, an online complaint to the CNIL is free and statistically effective.
For canvassing linked to a new-build home or renovation work, keep a record of everything: a paper logbook with date, time, number and the company named makes an enormous difference when you build a case for the DGCCRF. A simple spiral notebook kept near the phone does the job far better than a vague note in an app.
The hardware that helps (and the hardware that doesn't)
On mobile, filtering is software-based: no accessory blocks a call. A few pieces of equipment do, however, improve day-to-day comfort.
If your landline is being hounded too — and that's often the case in households with a broadband box — a DECT landline phone with built-in call blocking lets you build a hardware blacklist and reject withheld numbers, independently of your carrier. It's the simplest solution for an elderly parent who won't navigate settings menus.
For those bombarded because a work number is publicly listed, a dedicated second line is often the real answer: a prepaid SIM in a dual-SIM phone, reserved for forms and sign-ups, leaves your main line in peace. A dual-SIM smartphone with eSIM support lets the two coexist without a second device.
Finally, when phone harassment comes with worries about the security of your accounts, a physical FIDO2 security key strips any SMS-intercepted code of its value: it's the only authentication method that SIM swapping can't get around. And to understand the social engineering techniques used over the phone, an accessible book on cybersecurity in French beats ten alarmist videos: you can only properly protect yourself from what you've understood.
The seven-step protocol
To be done once, in this order, for a lasting result:
- Register your numbers on Bloctel (free, three years) — it gives weight to your future reports.
- Switch on your carrier's anti-spam option in your customer account: it's almost always disabled by default.
- Enable filtering of messages from unknown senders in your phone settings.
- Save 33700 in your contacts, so you can forward a suspicious text in three seconds.
- Never say "yes" to an open question from an unknown caller: the phrasing "would you like to stop receiving calls?" is sometimes used to record an agreement reused elsewhere. Answer with a full sentence: "I refuse all prospecting and I object to the processing of my data."
- Report unlawful calls on SignalConso, the DGCCRF's service, mentioning your Bloctel registration: that's what triggers inspections.
- Audit your consents twice a year: going through the "communication preferences" of the three or four sites where you left a number is enough to dry up the source.
What doesn't work, and what you should stop doing
- Blocking numbers one by one: the platforms rotate through hundreds of numbers. You'll lose that race.
- Calling an unknown number back to "find out": some numbers are premium-rate, and a call back confirms the line is active.
- Replying "STOP" to a fraudulent text: on a legitimate marketing text, STOP is mandatory and works. On a scam text, it merely confirms you exist.
- Insulting the caller: the person on the other end is often a precariously employed worker abroad, and it has no effect whatsoever on the campaigns.
- Changing your number: a heavy-handed measure, to be reserved for cases of established harassment — and to be followed by filing a criminal complaint, not just a number port.
Conclusion: silence is something you set up once, not every day
Telephone canvassing is no longer a technical inevitability. Between the move to explicit consent in August 2026, number authentication that kills spoofing at network level, and filters now present both at the carrier and on the phone, the tools exist — they're simply scattered across four places nobody thinks to look at on the same day.
Twenty minutes is enough: Bloctel, the carrier option, the two phone settings, 33700 saved as a contact. Readers who apply this protocol generally describe a drop of around 80 to 90% in volume, with a residue of legitimate calls you'd rather not miss anyway. The rest — SignalConso reports, GDPR objections — is just maintenance: five minutes a quarter, and the quiet holds.
