Threatening or abusive calls
If you are receiving abusive calls from a member of the public, you should report this to Oxford University Security Services (OUSS). Their crime reduction officers are trained in handling these types of incidents. Where appropriate, Oxford University Security Services will place a request with the Chorus team to block a number from dialling one or all University extensions.
OUSS phone number: +44(0)1865 2 72944
OUSS email address: security.control@admin.ox.ac.uk
Please note, requests to bar a number from calling the University must come from OUSS in the first instance.
Nuisance calls
The Chorus team register all University extensions with the Telephony Preference Service (TPS) each year. This is the Ofcom recommended approach for opting out of unsolicited calls, and makes it a legal requirement that UK-based telemarketers do not call numbers on this register. However, firms will still be able to contact you if you have given them permission to do so. You will need to contact these firms (preferably in writing) to request that they do not call you for future marketing purposes.
The University, in common with many other institutions across the UK, will occasionally be bombarded with calls which have spoofed their caller-id. You may find that you and a number of other colleagues are all receiving automated calls which play a message from a UK-based telephone number. In our experience, these are not legitimate calls, and are usually spoofing a UK-based telephone number in order to appear genuine. The Chorus team do not have a means of stopping these kinds of attacks, because barring these phone numbers from calling the University will only serve to potentially block legitimate calls. Attacks like this can last for several hours, but are not very common.
