How to Stop Spam Calls Using Phone Settings

Imagine sitting down for dinner or busy at work, and your phone rings. 

You answer, expecting it to be a friend or family member, but instead, it’s a robotic voice offering you low-interest loans or some “official” claiming there’s a problem with your bank account. 

It’s so frustrating. 

That’s spam calls— those annoying, unwanted calls that often interrupt us at the worst possible times. You have to stop what you’re doing, answer the phone, and deal with the interruption. 

They invade your personal time and privacy and sometimes lead to serious problems like financial scams.

According to a Times of India report, more than 60% of Indians reportedly received three or more spam calls on average every day. 

As per Truecaller’s Global Spam Report 2021, over 202 million spam calls were made by just one spammer in India. 

That’s over 664,000 people who were disturbed by spam calls every day and 27,000 people every hour – from just one phone number. The report also found that 93.5% of all incoming spam calls in India were sales-related. 

Spam calls are more than just an annoyance—they can be a serious threat. 

Many spam calls are scams. One of the most common scams is the KYC (know your customer) scam, where the spammer pretends to be a bank, or government official. Your details could be used for phishing, phone tracking, or even identity theft.

Given the serious threats spam calls pose, it’s smart to know how to protect yourself. 

Marking Individual Numbers as Spam

This is the easiest way to block unwanted calls. Just block each annoying number so you don’t receive calls from them again. Besides blocking, you can also report the number as spam.

For Android users, here’s how to do it:

1. Open the Phone app
2. Go to Recents
3. Tap the avatar of the caller you want to block
4. Tap the three-dot icon in the top right corner 
5. Select Block numbers
6. Check the box for Report as spam
7. Tap Block to confirm

Similarly, iPhone users can:

1. Open the Phone app, 
2. Go to Recents
3. Tap the info icon next to the number you want to block.
4. Tap Block this Caller > Block Contact

Activating Phone Settings 

Most smartphones come with built-in features to block spam calls. You can also download apps specifically designed to filter out spam calls. These apps can identify and block known spam numbers automatically.

Android Users

According to Google Support, you can get information about callers or businesses outside your contacts or warnings about potential spam callers when you make or get a call with caller ID and spam protection on.

If someone outside your contact list calls you, or you call them, Google identify its business Caller ID name or determine if the call is spam.

To enable caller ID and spam protection:

1. Open the Phone app
2. Tap More options   Settings  Caller ID and spam.
3. Turn See caller ID & spam on or off.
4. Optional: To block spam calls on your phone, turn on “Filter spam calls.” You don’t get missed call or voicemail notifications, but filtered calls are in your call history, and you can check your voicemail.

However, the Android Police has noted that spam filtering can sometimes be too sensitive, blocking numbers that aren’t saved in your contacts. 

For example, it might mark delivery numbers from services like Amazon or Zomato as spam, causing you to miss important calls from unknown numbers.

In that case, you can turn off spam filtering but keep See caller and Spam ID on.

iPhone Users

Although there is no similar setting option available for iPhone, you can use Silence Unknown Callers feature or a third-party app to block spam calls on your iPhone.

According to official Apple Help page, you can turn on Silence Unknown Callers to avoid getting calls from people you don’t know. This blocks phone numbers that you’ve never been in contact with before and aren’t saved in your contacts list. 

To turn on Silence Unknown Callers, 

1. Go to Settings 
2. Select Phone and then scroll down
3. Tap Silence Unknown Callers and turn on the feature

Calls from unknown numbers will be silenced and sent to your voicemail, and will appear in your recent calls list.

However, make sure you have saved any important contacts to your contacts list or you could miss a phone call that you don’t want to miss.

Using Third-Party Apps

To stop spam calls, you can also use third-party apps such as Truecaller. 

It claims to have advanced block options for making sure that you don’t receive spam or fraudulent calls.

In Truecaller app, you can set three levels of protection against spam calls. 

In the first level, called Off, Truecaller will show if the number calling is a spammer or not. 

In the next level, called Basic, Truecaller will block the worst spammers in your area/country automatically. Truecaller will also add offline protection to your device so you will be able to block spam calls even if you at the moment of the call don’t have data access. 

In the third level, called Max, you will get the highest protection. Truecaller will block all calls labelled as spam or fraud. This means that we will not distinguish between if the number spams a lot or a little, if the call is considered to be a spammer Truecaller will block it.

By taking these steps, you can protect yourself from unwanted calls and keep your personal information safe.