Continuous, Secretive, Obscene or harassing phone calls can be very scary and stressful. Even if calls are not threatening they can be of great inconvenience. However there are various options available to you to put an end to these calls. In most cases, simply uncloaking the individual is enough to bring your problems to swift and successful resolutions. Often times the source of the harassing or obscene calls will show the phone number as unlisted, unpublished, non published, anonymous or private. What is the difference between the phone number labels of unlisted, unpublished, non published, private or anonymous? All the above labels essentially mean the same thing.

When someone calls and uses obscene or threatening language.
When someone calls repeatedly and hangs up.
When someone calls and breathes heavy or remains silent to intimidate you.

Generally any unwelcome call is harassing however your telephone company or law enforcement will not take any action unless calls are frequent. If caller threatens you with specific threats of bodily harm to yourself or your family then the phone company or law enforcement will take prompt action.

The first thing to do is to call your phone company. Different phone companies have different policies on whether you should call the phone company or the police first. Some phone companies may ask you to call the phone company's local office and explain the problem. Other phone companies may require that you to file a formal complaint with local police before they will deal with the matter. You should contact your local phone company and find out what their policy is in matters of harassing calls. If the threats are serious and your life or property is threatened or if the obscene phone calls are very frequent then you should call your local police immediately and file a report and provide all details and  information. You should also note down dates and times of calls and  if the caller sounded male or female and describe his/her voice. If caller said anything or if there was any background noise then note down what the caller said and other details on the background noise. If any phone number was displayed on your caller ID you should note that down too.

Often when you receive frequent hang ups on your phone line it could be that someone is checking to see if you are home or its simply harassment. It could also be calls from telemarketers who use computers for "predictive dialing" to call consumers where the computer dials many phone numbers in a short period of time. When anyone answers, the computer finds a sales representative who is not occupied at that time and connects the call. If all sales reps are busy then consumer may hear only silence. These type of calls are called "abandoned calls." If you are receiving many abandoned calls in a day, you can call the annoyance department of your local phone company. If these repeated calls are from a malicious individual who is harassing you rather than a telemarketer, the phone company will generally report the number to law enforcement.