Spam Calls Flooding Your IPhone

TidBITS Talk
1

How do you handle the vast sea of spam calls you get?

To me, the killer app with the Apple Watch is call notification. I can reject a call without taking out my iPhone to see who’s calling. Any unknown number or strange name I send immediately to voicemail. I’d say about 90% of my calls are spam calls now. Most won’t leave a voicemail message. Those that do, I can usually figure it out via the Voicemail transcription Apple does.

For those who don’t have an Apple Watch, I’ve been telling them to take the Nuclear Option which is to treat all unknown numbers as spam. I tell them to turn on Do Not Disturb so it’s on 24 hours per day, and then to allow only your contacts through. Everyone else gets voicemailed.

I use to use NoMoRobo and RoboKiller, but they can’t seem to handle the ever changing landscape of spam numbers. Plus, RoboKiller once sent my consulting manager — the guy who gets me jobs — to their AnswerBot which was setup saying the number is no longer working. Very embarrassing.

How do you guys handle spam calls?

2

I do it the same way you do. The Watch has made rejecting phone calls fairly effortless. But it’s not the ideal solution.

I don’t know how other phone makers handle this, but Apple has it backwards. Instead of being able to block selected phone numbers, I should be able to set my phone to block all numbers, or divert all callers to voicemail automatically, and then I should be able to choose which numbers I want to whitelist, and within that subset I should be able to choose which callers can hijack my entire phone screen without any notice. I shouldn’t have to turn on Do Not Disturb to accomplish that.

Why should a spam call be able to disrupt my use of the device any more than a spam email would?

3

The way to do this:

  1. In the Contacts app, create a group of the entities that you want whitelisted.

  2. In Preferences -> Do Not Disturb, point the ‘Allow Calls from’ option to that group.

4

Of course, you will still need to turn on Do Not Disturb for this to function.

I haven’t done this full time, but I use this technique so that only vital calls get through when I turn on Do Not Disturb. Since I manipulate the setting from my Apple Watch, this is very convenient.

5

That’s definitely the best way to do it given the current limitations.

I guess a simpler description of my desire is this: I never want a phone call notification to hijack my entire screen. I’d like the option to make an incoming call notification behave the exact same way other notifications behave.

6

I don’t know how other phone makers handle this, but Apple has it backwards. Instead of being able to block selected phone numbers, I should be able to set my phone to block all numbers, or divert all callers to voicemail automatically, and then I should be able to choose which numbers I want to whitelist,

Actually, that’s what I tell people to do with Do Not Disturb.

You can set a time you want it on. You basically set the time to all the time, and then set Allowed Calls to All Contacts. Or, if you prefer, make a group of contacts to allow.

Yes, this is using Do Not Disturb, but you’re using it to whitelist who can contact you.

7

This is exactly what I blundered into doing as I fumbled for a way to deal with the spam calls.

In this situation, do unknown callers go to voicemail immediately or after the phone has seemed to have rung and not been answered?

Agree—which is why I say I blundered into this solution.

8

Actually, that’s a great idea. When the iPhone was designed, the phone was the main function. Remember the “A phone, an iPod, and a portable web browser!” mantra? It made sense when the phone was the main app to take up the whole screen.

Now, it’s almost one of the least important functions of an iPhone. If the iPod Touch could use 4G data and take a SIM, about 1/2 of the iPhone buyers would opt for that. All the functionality of the iPhone without the spammy calls.

Yes, the phone call notifications should be relegated to a mere notification window. I’m planning to download the beta and install it for testing. I’m going to enter that in the bug database as a suggestion.

9

iOS 13 will help with this:

Silence unknown callers
A new setting protects users from unknown and spam callers. When the setting is turned on, iOS uses Siri intelligence to allow calls to ring your phone from numbers in Contacts, Mail, and Messages. All other calls are automatically sent to voicemail.

My understanding is it will simply be a “silence unknown callers” toggle somewhere in the Settings. Even if this feature is included in the public betas of iOS 13, I wouldn’t install it. But I also wouldn’t put much effort into alternate solutions that could be rendered unnecessary once iOS 13 is out.

10

Wow. That certainly replaces the Do Not Disturb stuff I tell people. In fact, it’s even better since it looks at messages and emails too.

I will still use my Apple Watch to do the silencing, but it’s a great solution for those without or who get massive numbers of spam. The problem is that there is no other solution that works. Spam blockers depend upon a blacklist of numbers and spammers just keep changing them.

I pay $4 per month for expanded call ID. T-Mobile (which has its own blocking service that only gets rid of about 50% of the spam) sends me the caller ID of all callers it can. If I see a number only (no caller id) or a funny name as a caller ID “IRS Criminal Division”,”Sweepstake Winer” or “Mom”), I ditch it to voicemail.

There is something called STIR/SHAKEN that promises to eliminate spam, but it’s still two years from implementation.

I guess we have to suffer until then.

11

For me the phone was always the least important function right from the model 1. I remember telling naysayers, it isn’t a phone, it’s a computer that has a phone function.

12

I do pretty much the same but I never activated Voicemail so they don’t even get that. I also block the number if there is one. I think I have more blocked numbers than contacts.