Google Phone App Now Features Spam Protection

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Ever since telemarketing became a thing, groups of people have tried to make the most by resorting to what is know as spam calls. These often take the form of automated voice recordings (or robocalls as they are often called) being played back to the receiver, often selling goods or services that the receiver may or may not be interested in.

It’s really annoying and universally hated, and most of us inadvertently pick up such calls only to hang them up 3 seconds later.

Well, if you are a user of the Google Phone/Dialer App, then here’s some good news. The latest update to the Phone app now brings in built-in spam protection. While such a feature isn’t new by any standards judging by the number of similar apps on the Play Store, integrating the app directly into the default app across Nexus and Android One devices makes the service easily accessible to a good chunk of Android users, and the application itself likely works universally as well. How does it work?

If you have Caller ID turned on your device with the Phone app from the Play Store, then spam protection becomes available to you by default (with options to disable both Caller ID and Spam Protection). There’s no additional setup to undertake, which makes it very easy and convenient for the general user.

To check if an incoming call is a Spam call or not, Caller ID by Google shows the names of companies and services with a Local Business listing and also matches it though directories that show caller information for work or school accounts. It is unclear if a “Spam” database already exists built by Google, but the Spam protection features allow you to mark any recent incoming call as Spam. This then reports the number back to Google, while the Phone app makes sure that this number will not disturb you again in the future. For other users, when this number tries to call them up, they will see a “Suspected Spam Caller” or a more straight-forward “Spam” as the caller ID. Users can choose to answer the call, or simply block the number.

If a call from someone you know is incorrectly marked as spam, you can report the mistake from within the app. This will ensure that future calls from the number won’t be marked as spam. How this feature extends to other users is unknown, so there’s no guarantee that it will be marked as Not Spam for all users.

If you have a supported device, you can download the Phone app from the Play Store, or you can grab the latest apk from ApkMirror.

What do you think of this new feature? Let us know in the comments below!