世論 What Japan Thinks

If you’ve signed up for dodgy mailing lists or are getting too many calls from your ex on your mobile phone, fortunately almost all Japanese cell phone models have features enabling you to blacklist other phone numbers, email addresses and even complete domains. Personally, all bar one mailing list that I’ve joined has honoured my unsubscribe requests, but whenever I get a dodgy ワンギリ, wan-giri, call, that is a call that just rings once so when you call back they apply assorted high pressure sales or extortion tactics to you, it goes into the banned list on my phone. Recently, NEPRO JAPAN looked at how the average person used mobile phone blacklisting features.

Note that if you get a call from a number you don’t recognise, as well as the standard technique of Googling for it, another useful Japanese resource is this database of wan-giri numbers.

Research results

Q1: Have you ever used a mobile phone’s blacklisting service? (Sample size=3,916)

Yes	86%
No	13%
Didn’t know about such a feature	1%

Q2: What have you blacklisted; phone calls, email, both or neither? (Sample size=3,916)

Only phone calls	21%
Only mail	11%
Both calls and mail	55%
Neither	13%

Q3: What sort of things did you blacklist, or what might you blacklist? (Sample size=3,916, multiple answer)

No caller ID calls	77%
Someone I thought was a stalker	31%
People not in my phonebook/whitelist	26%
People I don’t like	25%
Calls from public phones	16%
Exes	13%
Work or school	2%
Parents	1%
Other	34%
Wouldn’t block anything	5%

Now I think about it, my phone is set to send no caller ID calls straight to answerphone, but does that count as blacklisting?

Q4: How many entries are curently in your blacklist? (Sample size=3,916)

No entries	29%
One or two entries	26%
Three or four entries	16%
Five or six entries	9%
Seven to ten entries	7%
Eleven to twenty entries	6%
Twenty-one to thirty entries	3%
Thirty-one or more entries	4%

Q5: Have you had problems due to blacklisting contacts? (Sample size=3,916)

Yes	9%
No	66%
Don’t know	13%
Never blacklisted anyone	12%

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