Bloctel will stop on 11 August: Saracroche and the 30 June 2025 law against spam calls

They are about to lose a genuinely handy tool.

For millions of people in France, it is an everyday nuisance: telemarketing calls repeatedly interrupt consumers’ peace and quiet, sometimes several times a day. Just as often, these calls are outright scams that you should avoid at all costs. To reduce the risk, many people have turned to a state-backed option by registering on Bloctel, the official anti-cold-calling list.

According to droits-finances, 12 million people have signed up to the platform. It is far from perfect, but it does at least offer some protection. Unfortunately, Bloctel will stop operating on 11 August - and there is a straightforward reason for that.

Bloctel to end on 11 August

From that date, the law of 30 June 2025 will take effect. It bans telephone canvassing entirely, regardless of the time, the day, or the business sector. The only exception is for companies you already have a contract with, which will still be allowed to contact you. Even so, nothing suggests this new law will be enough to wipe out spam calls once and for all.

What the 30 June 2025 law changes for cold calling

In theory, the blanket ban makes an opt-out list like Bloctel less necessary, because the default becomes “no cold calls”. In practice, the key question remains enforcement - and whether fraudsters and rogue operators will actually stop.

A highly effective app against unwanted calls: Saracroche

If legislation does not do the job, we recently mentioned the Saracroche app as another line of defence against unwanted calls. The idea is simple, yet highly effective: it blocks 16 million telephone numbers, including those using prefixes commonly associated with spam: 0162, 0163, 0270, 0271, 0377, 0378, 0424, 0425, 0568, 0569, 0948, 0949. It also identifies certain operators that are known for these calls.

Its creator, Camille Bouvat, has been a developer for nearly 19 years and a freelancer for 14 years. Keen to be transparent, he has made the source code available on GitHub. Interviewed last year by the site Framablog, he explained what pushed him to start the project:

"Like everyone else, I get unwanted calls in my personal life - and even more so when you’re self-employed. So I got started on this project, and it was a challenge for me because I’m a web developer, not a mobile developer. I wanted to build something native with Swift and Swift UI, to create a lightweight, high-performance app."

You can find more information on this in our previous article here. And you - do you use Bloctel, and were you happy with it? Feel free to share your view (calmly) in the comments.