Nobody likes spam calls except, we suppose, the people who make them. If you are tired of being woken up from your nap to try to sell you insurance or with various scams, we tell you how you can get rid of spam calls on an Android mobile.
We will give you several options to block unwanted calls on an Android mobileso you can find the combination between peace of mind and continue receiving the calls that matter to you, both from your contacts and from unknown numbers.
Activate the Google spam filter
Google has been improving the spam call filter that is included in its phone app for some time. Today, Google’s phone app is the default app of a good number of mobilesbecoming somewhat the standard.
The good news is that if your phone comes with its own phone dialer app, you can usually download Google Phone from Google Play and take advantage of its spam and caller ID features. However you purchased the app, you’ll need to make sure the call filter is on. To do this, go to the section Caller ID and spam of the settings.
Here you will find three options that are closely related to each other. The first one helps you to distinguish the calls that are spam from the ones that are not, trying to identify who it is on the screen that appears when they call you. For example, you will see that the call is from “Peluquería Peláez”. The second is the most important of all, Filter spam calls. If you activate it, the app automatically declines calls it considers to be spam, and alerts you with a notification.
The third option, verified calls, allows companies to identify themselves and add a reason for the call, which you will also see before picking up. For turn on google app spam blockerfollow these steps:
Open the app of google phone.
Tap on the menu ⋮ and choose Settings.
Go into Caller ID and spam.
active Filter spam calls.
If you want, you can also activate View caller ID and spam Y verified callswhich will give you more information about who is calling before you pick up.
Block them as they arrive
Google’s spam filter is pretty good, but it’s not foolproof. Before or after you will get calls that are obviously spam and various scams. Many of these cases will be marked as “possible spam” in the phone app, but in other cases they may appear as normal calls.
The good news is that you can help rid the world of spam by letting Google know about it. In the call history, tap on the call in question and tap Mark as spam. This informs Google and also blocks the number.
After marking a number as spam in the Google app, the following call attempts you receive will go directly to the trash. Normally, spammers use multiple numbers, but blocking numbers endlessly will eventually give you some peace. These are the steps to block a number that has called you:
In the phone app, tap recent.
Tap on the call.
Press Mark as spam.
press again Mark as spam.
Goodbye, hidden numbers
If they are the hidden numbers the ones that don’t stop bothering youthere is also a solution for this, although keep in mind that this filter does not discriminate so that you could miss calls with hidden numbers that are important.
To block all hidden numbers on an Android phone, go to the phone app settings and tap on blocked numbers. There, check the box unknown. These are all the steps:
Open the app of google phone.
Tap on the menu ⋮ and choose Settings.
Tap on Blocked numbers
active unknown
What if my mobile has another phone app?
Not all Android phones come with the Google phone app pre-installed, they come with their own app. In this case, you depend on the mobile layer having its own call filter, something that does not always happen. Yes, there is usually a way to block calls (sometimes even integer prefixes), or allow calls only from a closed list of phones, as in Huawei’s EMUI.
EMUI call filter options
In most cases you can install the Google Phone app to take advantage of Google’s anti-spam filter, though if you’re getting a massive amount of spam calls and they escape Google’s filter, you might need something stronger.
In this case it can be useful an app like Truecaller, which is something like the standard for caller identification and blocking. The app is not without controversy, especially in the way it accumulates user data, and it certainly isn’t very light, so you’ll have to assess what you get and what you have to offer in return.
If the Google filter or the one that comes with your mobile falls short, you will always have Truecaller
Truecaller has years of experience identifying calls and a huge user base, so it is quite likely that any spam call attempts will be correctly identified. If Truecaller doesn’t convince you, there are other similar apps to block calls.
