Your iPhone is better at stopping scams thanks to iOS 26
It was five or six years ago since I stopped answering my phone. With the exception of family or work calls, from which I expect, everyone now goes directly to Voicemail, where my iPhone software is the news that is almost always robocalls or spam. And my text messages are more chaos than my unanswered calls.
Apple has promised to help with a few new functions in iOS 26. You may not have noticed that you have updated your iPhone because the most ambitious function that AI uses is switched off by default. (You will be asked to turn it on if you open the telephone app to iOS 26 after updating, or you can switch it on In your telephone app settings By selecting “Drafting Grund for Calling”.) Another new function that filters out Spam texts is by default, but it is a little confusing to find out how it works. I am still down to try something.
Around 80 percent of the Americans are like me and do not answer any calls from unknown numbers. That is According to a PEW survey 2020And I would suspect that the percentage is higher today, especially after the fraudster bonanza launched by pandemic. In the meantime, TextSpam definitely increases, at least after An ongoing record of RobokillerWhat spam blocking software does. Last August alone, the Americans received 19.2 billion spam texts, which is 63 spam texts per person this month. The Federal Trade Commission Estimates The Americans lose $ 470 billion a year to text-based frauds.
Who is to blame for this chaos? The status of accountability looks like how The Spider-Man memeApart from everyone, the fraudsters and spammer points. But really, airlines, supervisory authorities and technology companies are all to blame and the problem is deteriorated.
“This should be a collective, social solution, as this is such a terrible problem in this country and for years and years.” Teresa MurrayA consumer guard in the US Pirg Education Fund told me. “Most people I know, old people, young people, middle -aged people, specialists, students, no matter what they do, everyone I talk to has a certain skepticism that their phone answers, and that's unhappy.”
Apple gets more serious screening calls
Apple's new functions improve and complicate the situation. As soon as you have switched on the new call -screening functions of the iPhone, unknown callers are greeted by Siri instead of you or your voicemail. Siri asks her to say her name and the reason for your call in front of your phone, her answer will be transcribed in real time and a notification is sent to your iPhone. If you ignore it, the call goes directly to VoiceMail. If you tap the warning, you will see the transcription and from there you can enter an answer to the person, answer the call or just stop stopping the connection. If it is someone you want to speak to in the future, you can later mark them as “known” so that you do not have to go through the screening process again.
These are many steps just to decide whether you want to answer a call. There is also a lot more agency about the situation that gets out of control. The caller -id is so easily fake that even the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Recommends that you do not answer calls From unknown numbers. If you pick up, there is a possibility that it is a fraudster that uses widespread AI tools Cloon the voice of a loved one to clone – You can find your voice from video clips on social media – and persuade you to send you money. At least fraudsters and spammer can know that their number is active and that they answer it, two information could lead to even more fraud and spam.
The new call screening function on iPhones protects you from some of these problems, but not all of them. By forceing the bad actor to deal with Siri and convince you that you are legitimate, the software gives you an additional line of defense. Of course, fraudsters will also develop new tricks for this. When Siri asks her to identify, the person can say at the other end what they want, including: “Hey, I am and I'm in trouble.” There are also No option to hear this recording And confirm that it is your beloved person or even a person. It is also unclear whether Siri, who answers the call, also tells the bad actors that they have reached an active telephone number and that they set up for further fake calls.
Other technology companies have their own solutions for unwanted calls. Google published a few months ago A suite of AI-driven call screening functions For its pixel phones, some of which are very similar to Apple for iPhones. A similar option call -screening Comes to Samsung Galaxy Phones Also in the future. Regardless of the type of phone you have, the Google Voice app offered A dead man path On screen calls: Unknown callers are asked to specify their names, and then this recording is played for you when you pick up, but before the call is actually connected. It is very similar to Apple, Google and Samsung now – but with the actual human interaction instead of AI.
Text messages look more like e -mails
And then there is the unwanted text messages. You would think that blocking unwanted texts would be as easy as sending all Spam emails to a junk folder. However, the SMS infrastructure fundamentally differs from that of e -mails, and it is more difficult to build up in certain filters. The FCC did it Set the first rules In fraud texts last year, but how they are safe, the unwanted texts come again and again.
Apple deals with new options for SMS reports in iOS 26. You are confusing, so wear it with me. First, Since 2019They were able to switch the “Filter unknown sender” function in the message app settings to iPhones. If you do this, messages from someone who was not in your contacts or that you never wrote would be sent to another inbox, which was difficult to find.
If you switch on in iOS 26 “unknown sender of” screen “, these messages are two taps from your main mail entrance: Simply search for the three lines in the upper right corner of the news app. You can also manage whether you receive notifications if these messages arrive and you can mark the sender as “known” if you do not want you to end up in the inbox “unknown senders” – or delete the entire conversation and mark as a spam.
Afterwards there is the new “Filter Spam” function, which is constantly updated updated spam detection software for the device to keep junk out of your inbox of the main reports. This is switched on by default and you will find the messages in a “spam” fordo directly under the “Unknown sender” folder in the menu, to which you access by tapping on the three lines (you cannot answer messages in the “Spam” folder and your links are deactivated unless you move them out of this folder). In addition, you can activate even more filters by switching on the standard “text message filter” from Apple, creating folders for “transactions” and “promotions” and automatically sends this type of messages there (this option is available in Brazil and India for a few years). You also have the option of adding a third -party filter from apps to how HiyaPresent NomoroboAnd RobokillerThis promise to help you tame your SMS chaos (you can also handle spam phone calls).
If all of these text messages start to sound very similar to your e -mail mailing input, this is probably the design. Over the years we have made progress in counting the electricity of E -Mail spam. So why not try to take text messages a similar way? As soon as I activated all different SMS screens, filters and inboxes from Apple, I found that it was easier to miss messages that I might otherwise want to see how the invitation to a party that I only found after the end of the party.
There is no silver ball to remove all spam calls and texts. In fact, the best option for most people is probably a bit due to going through. For example, if you see a new doctor, you would like to know that he is called, even if your specific expansion is not recognized in your contacts or as frequent contact. And even if you spend money on a demanding filter app and take the time to do all settings correctly, you are obliged to miss something important. I recently spoke to someone whose spam filter repeatedly blocked the call of the passage agency. In the end she had to cancel a vacation.
Nevertheless, the big problem with fraudsters is that they cheat. Over 70 percent of the Americans say that they know someone who has become the victim of an online fraud, and 30 percent say they are in a favor. According to McAfee Labs. I almost fell in love with a demanding IRS telephone fraud a few years ago, and a reporter from the New York Times, who recently covered fraud Dangerously close to falling in love with a cell fraud. All fraudsters have to start with you is a nugget of data that you can get to pick up the phone or to answer a text to get more information.
“By harvesting this information in flying, you can either cheat it on site or enrich your database so that you can address you next time you can appeal to you in a more stark way” Abhishek carnikDirector of threat research and reaction at McAfee.
In other words, every attempt at fraud leads to the next, and the attempts are never ending. It is nice that Tech companies give us more tools to defend us. But it is still not enough.
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