Get Your iPhone to Ask Callers Who They Are Before You Answer

[MisterSavage]

Great idea but not activated this as I get couriers call me about deliveries and local health centre for appointments which use special numbers.

That's why I never turned on block unknown callers but it's not a reason to avoid this feature. If it's someone legitimate they could still get through.

I haven't enabled this feature even though I get daily spam calls.

I like keeping it simple and old-fashioned voicemail is enough. If it's legit they'll leave a message. If it's urgent they'll call back a second time. Either way I'll get the message.

Yes, but your phone is still ringing throughout the day for no reason. I was getting at least 4-5 spam calls a day and now I'm getting practically none.

 

[Mr. Nice]

Unfortunately if it’s an automated spam call this tells the spammer that this is an active line and you’re now added to their call list.

This feature is pointless.

Apple needs to finally introduce a feature that allows you to block calls from entire countries.

 

[macjaffa]

This feature is pointless.

Apple needs to finally introduce a feature that allows you to block calls from entire countries.

Impossible. Even if technically possible, useless.

 

[ImAlwaysRight]

This feature works well for me, although there are a good number of calls that still get through.

 

[ignatius345]

It would be great if there was a way to enable calls to override this ‘silience’ feature - IF the phone number includes an area code that has been pre-entered (within iPhone call settings) to ALLOW to override this feature

Oftentimes we are expecting an important phone call from either a doctors office or from work for which (we may not know the actual complete phone number) but where the area code IS in fact already known (OR) can be assumed to be one of the receiving callers, local area codes

I don't think this would help much. Spammers often spoof caller ID to show your own area code to make it look "local" when it's not.

 

[ignatius345]

This feature is pointless.

Apple needs to finally introduce a feature that allows you to block calls from entire countries.

This would depend on the telcos actually modernizing their own systems. The iPhone only gets access to whatever caller ID the carrier passes through to the phone -- and those are trivial to fake.

 

[Digital Dude]

I agree with some others. What this does, more than anything, is discourage callers from engaging, and as a result you can lose what could have been an important call. For example, medical providers will not respond due to HIPAA restrictions. 🤷‍♂️

 

[Plutonius]

Eliminate people from the conversation. Instead, have the phones talk to each other.

You could have a good argument between Android and iOS phones 🙂 .

 

[jlwarlow]

This works so well. I used to get several calls a day from solar, bitcoin, whisky investment etc. Now nothing. I do turn it off when expecting call from the Dr/Hospital but having this on for the majority of the time is fantastic!

 

[sflagel]

No one ever responds to this, they just hang up, even my doctor. And so do I.

 

[jimothyGator]

I had this turned on, in hopes it would reduce interruptions from spammers and scammers. Unfortunately, "Nicole from Business Lending Division" and "Sam from Tax Compliance Unit" identify themselves, while legitimate calls often do not and hang up. So it had the opposite effect than I hoped for.

One particular frustrating incident: I had requested a customer service callback, and didn't think to turn this feature off. It blocked the call back, so I had to start the whole process, and wait, over.

I appreciate the effort to make modern phone calls a little less frustrating, but it didn't work out in practice.

 

[Student of Life]

Yesterday I had my first future AI experience where my phone screened the call and the transcription was from another automated system (Lifelock) telling me it was an urgent notification that my data was found online. The phone then let the call through and started ringing me. It should’ve just kept recording the voicemail.

Wait something is not right here. The phone show you the transcription of the call then gives you the option to answer or ignore it. It doesn’t automatically start ringing.

 

[mikebenton]

PSA: If you have this feature enabled, these calls will not get forwarded to your Apple Watch if you are away and on cellular. Known callers will ring through, but any unknown calls will not.

 

[ifxf]

I wonder if Apple is obligated to let political calls through? Guess we will find out this fall.

 

[bmark]

Call screen is great but there should be an option to hang up the call instead of send to voicemail.

 

[Arran]

Yes, but your phone is still ringing throughout the day for no reason. I was getting at least 4-5 spam calls a day and now I'm getting practically none.

Fair point. I get maybe two spam calls a day - so it's no big deal to see an unknown caller on my apple watch and just ignore it. (My phone has been on silent for about a decade, btw)

 

[pbau]

Not working in Poland

 

[Arran]

Call screen is great but there should be an option to hang up the call instead of send to voicemail.

How would it tell which calls to hang up and which to send to voicemail?

Or do you mean it should it just send all calls to voicemail after "screening". Or just calls from unknown callers? (You can probably do that already in focus modes)

Personally, I'd be up for a new feature that played unknown callers a message along the lines of, "All operators are busy right now. Your call is important to us. Please hold on the line for the next available operator. Your estimated wait time is TEN minutes") 😉

 

[jlc1978]

This mostly works.

Mostly is key. I get a daily spam call from spoofed numbers. The recording starts "Hi. This is..." which triggers the filter and starts translating. What ould be really powerful is if Apple's AI could be trained to recognize the pattern, becasue the call, othe rthan number and name, is the same. Then, if a message matches the pattern, delete it. Or even better, require the caller to press a random key on the keypad so robocalls just get dropped.

Now, I get a name in the Probably from... on call ID. Not all that useful to get rid of robocalls and scams.

Of course, the real solution is for teleco's to verify the caller ID matches the actual number used so you could automatically reject spoofed numbers.

 

[ikramerica]

Unfortunately all the significant robocalls I've seen lately use neighbor spoofing so area codes are not an effective way to identify the call.

For all the talk and supposed action by the FCC the last few years, there are still completely spoofed, foreign originating calls being delivered by the cartel telcos. I don't understand how that can still happen, but it is.

For me, that’s only half right. They use the area code and try to get the city but the iPhone doesn’t get tricked fully and identifies the city as the GIANT metropolis city I live in or the interchange they are using which is not local to me.

A real call is identified by local area, even when it’s only a defined neighborhood, like “Woodland Heights” and if I am expecting a call from that area, it’s easy to filter the spam out.

And that’s only when it isn’t flagged as Potential Spam, which iPhone has at least a 50% chance of doing.

 

[ikramerica]

This feature is pointless.

Apple needs to finally introduce a feature that allows you to block calls from entire countries.

Yes, send ALL foreign calls to voicemail no ringing, including those spoofed (because the iPhone CAN tell the difference most of the time).

 

[211]

Unfortunately if it’s an automated spam call this tells the spammer that this is an active line and you’re now added to their call list.

As soon as the phone rings, the spammer knows it's an active line already. I have been using the Ask Caller feature and spam calls have actually gone down significantly

 

[kalsta]

Unfortunately if it’s an automated spam call this tells the spammer that this is an active line and you’re now added to their call list.

Correct, and this makes it actually worse than not having it, it has not been thought out for how the real world works, not surprised.

Er, if your phone is ringing or going to voicemail, that also tells them it’s an active line. Am I missing something here?

As soon as the phone rings, the spammer knows it's an active line already. I have been using the Ask Caller feature and spam calls have actually gone down significantly

Ah, you beat me to that point as I was typing. 😄

 

[Timpetus]

Not what this article is talking about

It could be, if you're using a callback feature that a lot of companies use instead of making you stay on the line while holding. A lot of them will actually call you back when it's your turn from a different number than the one you originally called, so they'd be caught in this and might think it means you don't want to talk to them any more...

 

[emdub]

only in the US