Are you answering your phone to unknown number now?

Spangler, The Track and Trace phone app has two main functions:

*ensures that anyone who develops symptoms of coronavirus (COVID-19) can quickly be tested to find out if they have the virus, and also includes targeted asymptomatic testing of NHS and social care staff and care home residents

*helps trace close recent contacts of anyone who tests positive for coronavirus and, if necessary, notifies them that they must self-isolate at home to help stop the spread of the virus

Everyone I know has downloaded the Scottish one onto their phone.
If it slows down the virus, I'm all for it.

I always answer calls as sometimes it is from the hospital. Like Monica if there is no one there I hang up. Even if it is an unsolicited call if they are polite I tell them I am not interested and they don’t ring back.

Btw welbeck have you not heard of capital letters?

I think the ‘track and trace’ is about Covid Spangler not a phone facility.
?

We have so much vintage equipment around the house that without knowing it the world has past us bye. Our central heating dial is in Fahrenheit, as is the cooker controls. We still have the wedding presents of bathroom & kitchen scales in imperial without translation and we have our original finger dial phone that we were issued with in 1968. (We bought it for a nominal one pound.)

One of our friends in our social group is a former telephone engineer, we bought the phone that he recommended. It shows the incoming number, or number withheld, it also allows us to use those annoying automated call receivers where you have to press one for the money, two for the show. Previously if I dialled one, it simply cut me off. Our friend wired it into our existing phone so that we can go on using the dial.

I've never heard of track and trace, but there again, I don't need it, a good old profanity works just as well.

The problem about not answering an unknown number is that it could actually be an important call.
Twice I have been on holiday abroad and received a number of calls from an unknown number.
It turned out they were urgent medical phone calls.
I have the generic NHS number saved to my phone, but these were different.

You can also check the number later on Who called me?, which identifies scam numbers.

If I do not recognise the number, I pick the phone up but say nothing, if there is silence the other end or a recorded message starts, I just press the off button and put the phone down. If someone speaks, again, within seconds you know whether it is a friend or legitimate call. If it is neither, press the off button. The whole process takes about 10 seconds.

I would never return a call to an unknown number. As you say, if it is someone you know they will text, email or ring back.

What is there to be afraid of?

Don’t have a monitoring service, but have no problem in hanging up if not interested in the calls that come through,

It’s more the annoyance factor than a fear for me, I’m just fed up with interrupting what I’m doing to take a call about something irrelevant. I look the number that’s called me up after it’s rung, and then block it if I’m not interested. The Track and Trace number would be identified as such if you look it up I think?

I can’t understand the fear. What is the point of having a phone if you don’t answer it?
It’s your phone, you are in complete control. If you are uninterested in the call you simply terminate it either by cutting it off or placing the phone down and leaving it. They will ring off.
If you are getting too many calls then by all means get a monitoring service but please consider - What is there to be scared about?

No problem answering I can easily hang up I don’t have a monitoring service I pay enough and can monitor my own calls
I don’t get hardly any spam calls on my mobile and use the landline so little it wouldn’t be worth it
I haven’t put track and trace on my phone as I have so little faith in it

I totally agree wellbeck each local NhS has a very robust tracking service for notifiable and sexual diseases This should have been used but wouldn’t bring in the Private money for the Backscratchers ...it’s disgusting

i have call monitoring, so unless they announce themselves, it does not ring.
the track n trace system is pants.
it should use an easily recognised number which we could all enter into our accepted calls.
and there should be a facility to return calls/messages which there is not at the moment.
they should give it to local public health/ environmental health teams. they have been doing this for notifiable diseases for yonks. could employ some extra staff, remotely, to expand coverage.
let those who know what they are doing and how to do it, get on with it. not jobs for the boys/girls dado etc, and big fat contracts, no monitoring of performance. public money wasted. control of disease compromised. they get richer, dado etc. we get sicker. and poorer. go figure.