Growing Number of Users Receiving Spam Group FaceTime Calls

[averagenerd81]

People still leave their phones on overnight?

Yup. Some of us have to for work or other emergency purposes. I just set my phone to DND with a strict allowed list. My phone doesn’t make a peep unless it’s a real emergency.

 

[macsareveryinteresting]

What I just do is I join, turn off my camera and then pretend I’m Venom. Then leave and then block them.

 

[walnuts]

Seems like a major cause of the problem here might be that a spammer has been able to write something that can make FaceTime calls. I thought the only thing that could make FaceTime calls were 1st party aps? The volume and repetition here seems to high for a manual process. There might be a fix in looking into something like that...

 

[DeepIn2U]

Wow, that must be pleasant. Hopefully Apple finds a way to stop it.

if you owned a Blackberry then you had experience unwanted BBM messages; purely unwanted.
This is NOT A good sign.

Apple needs to properly enable blocking iMessage users.

 

[icwhatudidthere]

Seems like a major cause of the problem here might be that a spammer has been able to write something that can make FaceTime calls. I thought the only thing that could make FaceTime calls were 1st party aps? The volume and repetition here seems to high for a manual process. There might be a fix in looking into something like that...

I read a mention somewhere that this is the reason Apple is moving to randomly generated serial numbers. Apparently what spoofers are doing is generating fake serial numbers, registering it as a genuine product and making an account that can do FaceTime like that.

 

[sw1tcher]

For guys, just answer the Facetime call with camera pointed at your hairy butt 🤣

 

[Marzzz]

People still leave their phones on overnight?

I have to because of my work, but I have Do Not Disturb on so that only “Favorites” (i.e. my answering service) can get thru to me.

 

[gr8hii]

Add me to the list for this happing to one of my kids. not happy about it.

 

[_Refurbished_]

An unforeseen advantage to sleeping naked.

 

[synergize]

I had one last week, 12 people were calling, I declined the call. They called back about 40 minutes later, again 12 people like the first call. After that, never had another call, it is creepy and I DO NOT like it at all!

 

[mi7chy]

"If you're not paying for it, you're the product."

 

[LeadingHeat]

People still leave their phones on overnight?

Lol, yes the small percentage of us who need an alarm for work the next morning

 

[mw360]

Has nobody picked up to see who the group is? They could be trapped on a island or something.

 

[tranceking26]

Blimey this sounds quite crazy tbh, I hope Apple gets this one sorted asap. I have no idea how I'd react to this!

 

[max2]

I disable mine. Never user Facetime.

 

[LeadingHeat]

Has nobody picked up to see who the group is? They could be trapped on a island or something.

Just tell them you know about the 4, 8, 15, 16, 23 and 42 number sequence and they’ll probably be too scared to call you back

 

[Apple_Robert]

I have insider information that the influx of FaceTime calls is coming from Google calling people and telling them not to hang up. This call is very important for Google Map purposes.

 

[jarman92]

Apple uses Caller Verification Services. You can see it in your call logs. What boggles the mind is that Apple does not use it to filter calls. Blocking unverified numbers would be a huge help.

Yeah, they went through the trouble to implement it and it’s completely useless. There’s a check mark next to the call in your call log. So AFTER the call, I can see if the number is verified. So helpful.

 

[jarman92]

Can’t you just turn off FaceTime? Obviously not a long-term solution, but would definitely stop the calls…

 

[pers0n]

Spammers always find a way to ruin everything:

• physical mail
• phone calls
• email
• forums, blogs, IM, comments/forms online
• SMS (texts)
• group SMS
• iMessage
• now facetime
  

 

[Mendoza_559]

Seems like a cool way to meet new people during the Bunker Era, imo

Lmao 🤣

 

[profets]

You can filter unknown callers, for normal calls.

That doesn’t come even remotely close to solving the issue of spam phone calls. Though I think a big part of that should be up to carriers and not device manufacturers.

 

[ian87w]

That doesn’t come even remotely close to solving the issue of spam phone calls. Though I think a big part of that should be up to carriers and not device manufacturers.

For regular cellular calls, sure. But carriers make money from the calls to the point they are also selling customer numbers to marketers, so it is completely against the carriers' bottom line to do anything about spam calls. Unfortunate.

But for Facetime calls, Apple has all the caller info. Apple should probably put a feature for users to report a spammer Facetime number so it can be blocked from Apple's end if a number have suspicious activities (eg. random calls of many numbers in short amount of time).

 

[profets]

For regular cellular calls, sure. But carriers make money from the calls to the point they are also selling customer numbers to marketers, so it is completely against the carriers' bottom line to do anything about spam calls. Unfortunate.

But for Facetime calls, Apple has all the caller info. Apple should probably put a feature for users to report a spammer Facetime number so it can be blocked from Apple's end if a number have suspicious activities (eg. random calls of many numbers in short amount of time).

I don’t disagree. But my comment was a reply specifically about normal calls.

For FaceTime, a single setting to allow only known contacts would make a huge improvement.

 

[ian87w]

I don’t disagree. But my comment was a reply specifically about normal calls.

For FaceTime, a single setting to allow only known contacts would make a huge improvement.

But then there are times when you have calls from people that you know but have new number, or new friends where you have not saved their numbers on your phone. A total whitelist solution might not be ideal.

I mean personally, I prefer Whatsapp' method. When there's a whatsapp message/call from a suspicious number, you can just decline and then flag it and block/report it to Whatsapp. Quite simple imo.