Step up blocking unwanted calls and texts

I came across two seemingly unrelated pieces of news recently that I am tying together as the theme of this column.

First, the heartbreaking garbage information that senior citizens may receive as many as 50 calls a day from salespeople trying to get them to reveal enough personal data that it can be used to commit fraud or identity theft, including charging Medicare for unneeded care or supplies or never-performed procedures.

Second, a wildly varying set of statistics about the percentage of iPhone owners who have upgraded to iOS 26. Is it 15%, 26%, 55%, or far more? We don’t know. But it appears to be far less adoption this far out than updates to iOS 18 a year ago. Blame Liquid Glass, or user exhaustion, or the amount of unused storage required.

The practical combination is that tools introduced in the 26 releases for Phone and Messages, particularly useful on an iPhone, are either not being used or could be used better.

Apple stepped up to the plate on overhauling and improving the way that unwanted and full-on spam messages are identified and categorized, and can be blocked. Let’s look at how you could configure your phone—and that of people you love—to better lock out the creepo fraudsters.

Take a look at updated Phone settings

In that Times Medicare scam article, one senior explained to the reporter why he answers every call:

His family can’t set the phone to allow calls only from preapproved numbers, because that would filter out some medical calls. And changing his phone number seems unfeasible, given that every legitimate contact would have to be notified.

“I’m counting the days until open enrollment ends,” Ms. Kurutz said.

With iOS 26, there’s a lot more that can be done, even by a user who isn’t a smartphone expert. Most of the actions that can be taken are as complex as answering a call or not much more so. The benefits of acting on them should be enough to reinforce behavior.

The most incredible thing you can enable for yourself or someone else right away is the Screen Unknown Callers feature in the Settings app in Apps: Phone. To balance the need to get calls from unknown parties while also avoiding fraud, enable Ask Reason for Calling. Now, any incoming call that isn’t from a number in contacts requires the calling party to provide a little information, which is automatically transcribed and can be viewed in real time.

Using call screening ensures you don’t have to pick up for bozos.

Set to Ask Reason for Calling for real-time, automated screening that can weed out scumbags (and time wasters).

If it’s a scammer, it’s easy enough to tap Stop or just ignore. Any legitimate party will say who they are. Later, you can select the call and tap Report Spam. While some fraudsters rotate through numbers like mad, I think some industry and governmental measures in the United States to reduce the ability to fake incoming phone numbers have worked: If I don’t block a number immediately, I will often see calls from it over time until I do. I also find that looking up a number via a search engine leads me to a page with a huge number of spam reports, meaning that number should be blocked in any case.

People unfortunate enough to follow me on Bluesky know that I needed a lot of medical care in 2025—things are going great now!—and I enabled this iOS 26 feature in the summer on a beta release. I constantly had calls coming from healthcare workers, and the filtering feature meant I answered all of those (and then marked them as known callers), and was able to avoid dozens of others.

Call Filtering may move some calls out of sight if Unknown Callers is on, though it’s quite useful when you aren’t expected calls from unknown numbers, like medical staff.

Because of the possible need to receive calls from unknown numbers, as above, you may want to leave Phone settings for Call Filtering: Unknown Callers turned off. If you don’t, then a screened or missed call from such a number requires tapping the Filter menu and choosing Unknown Callers to review it. At least a red dot appears over the Filter icon when there are messages in Unknown Callers or Spam to give a cue.

The other option in this section, Spam, should be turned on. It lets you rely on a carrier’s analysis from phone network traffic of call patterns or customer reports of spam. I also recommend installing the free version of the apps from AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon that let you enable spam detection at the network level—that can block some calls even before they reach your phone.

The Call Blocking & Identification option is yet another way to amp up your iPhone’s intelligence about calls you (or a loved one) doesn’t want. Services from companies like Hiya receive spam reports constantly, and push out updates to a list that’s resident on your device that allows instant matching for potential or well-known spam numbers. Enabling one of these apps lets calls that pass through other layers of filtering display a label identifying a call you might not or surely don’t want. With a paid subscription, you can also show enhanced Caller ID information.

Filtering unknown senders and spam can prevent most unwanted messages.

While Phone has received the biggest boost at fighting crud, and Messages is not where most of the Medicare and other kinds of relentless fraud come from, it’s still worth enabling in Settings in Apps: Messages: Screen Unknown Senders and Apps: Messages: Filter Spam. This lets you tap Filter: Unknown Senders or Filter Spam to review messages dropped into those buckets.

This takes more training. I find I have to tap Mark as Known or Not Spam on more messages than phone calls—most phone calls are correctly identified.

While I’m focused on iPhone here, call screening can be used in Phone for iOS, iPadOS, and macOS; some of the other screening options are slightly different or missing on macOS, but if you have them enabled on your iPhone, the effect is the same. It’s only if your iPhone were turned off that you would see a difference.

Liquid strength

Look, I know you have feelings about Liquid Glass—speaking to both upgraded people and non-upgraders—but I think there’s a value to overcoming that distaste and taking advantage of the good. Reducing the attention stolen away from you can be worth the cognitive load of adapting to a new interface.

For those who want extra help in sorting out iOS 26 and spam, you can check out three of my books:

Take Control of FaceTime and Messages: This book, which includes full cover of the Phone app across iOS, iPadOS, macOS, and watchOS, will help you understand everything you can do to fight spam, scams, and many forms of harassment.

Take Control of iOS 26 and iPadOS 26: This title will help any iOS 18 or iPadOS 18 user understand exactly what changed, instead of digging through settings and features in apps.

Take Control of iPhone and iPad Basics: This edition, completely revised for iOS 26 and iPadOS 26, takes you through all the stuff that nobody ever tells you about an operating system, and that it’s just assumed you know. It’s great as a gift, too.

[Got a question for the column? You can email glenn@sixcolors.com or use /glenn in our subscriber-only Discord community.]