When was the last time you got a new phone number? Chances are you still have the same number you got when you bought your first device, whenever that was, and have ported it from one phone to another over the years. These days, carriers are happy to let you keep your number if you want, even if you sign up for a new plan, making it easy to go through life with the same digits for decades.

But given the persistent spam calls and texts and general concerns about privacy, there is definitely a reason to change your phone number now, even if it seems like it would cause more chaos than good.

The stereotype suggests that the phone call is dead, but it’s still widely used. The callers doing the heavy lifting here, unfortunately, are spammers. You see it all the time: your iPhone or Android can literally tell you that the incoming call is a spam risk, or a number closely related to yours, or comes from a random location where no one who actually wants to talk to you would call from.

And it’s not just spam calls that are annoying these days; it’s spam emails, too. I receive far too many spam emails almost daily, sent from both phone numbers and email addresses, and they range from long pitches about car warranties to phishing attempts to PDFs I’ll never open. Even with the ability to report spam to your provider, it’s a Sisyphean task to combat it.