How to block text messages but not phone calls from unknown numbers

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I’ve been inundated with political spam text messages over the last few weeks. In preparation for the next election season, I’d therefore really, really like to be able to block all text messages from numbers that are not in my contacts.

I do not want phone calls to be blocked. I already have my phone set to mute all unknown callers, so if it’s important the caller can still leave a voice mail. In my book, if it’s not important enough to leave a voice mail, it’s not important.

By Googling I found a number of websites that claim to address the issue, but they all broke down into two camps, neither of which seems to help. One camp said to do it through the phone app, but that results in phone calls, as well as texts, being blocked instead of merely being muted. The other camp said to do it through the messaging app, but I as far as I can tell that takes me to the very same setting as for phone calls. At least the screen looks exactly the same as the one produced by going through the phone app, and I see no way to tell if it is the same or just looks the same. If the former, then by enabling it I’d be blocking phone calls that I don’t want to be blocked. So at this point I don’t know whether the original apps on the phone are capable only of being all-or-nothing, or if I’m just missing something.

If I have to get a third party app for this, I’m happy to pay for it. So all suggestions gratefully accepted. In the meanwhile, I’m blocking all unknown numbers, phone and text alike, until after Tuesday.

Thanks.

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If your provider is Verizon they have a place on the website where you can block all unknown texts.

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I didn’t find anything on the Verizon site about blocking all text messages from unknown numbers (though maybe I don’t know how to look effectively).

I found only two things on the subject of blocking messages:

1) Call Filter, for $2.99/month, which is said to block “all spam and robocalls.” The description reads as though it applies to phone calls as well as text messages, without distinction, which isn’t what I want. Also, I’m not interested in an elaborate process that identifies and then blocks spam; I just want to do something much simpler: block all messages from unknown numbers.

2) A feature that blocks up to 5 specific calls for up to 90 days. This of course is much more limited than what I need.

Sorry to ask if this requires work on your part, but do you have a specific reference to what Verizon has available? Say, by name or by the way it’s supposed to work?

In the meanwhile, I Googled for apps that can block all text messages from unknown numbers. Most of such apps’ web pages talk about blocking spam according to various criteria that the user specifies, and fail to talk about the solution I’m looking for.

Two apps, however, may (or may not) do the trick: SpamHound SMS Spam Filter and TextKiller. General statements on their main web pages suggest that they possibly can be set up to do what I want, but I have to investigate further. But if Verizon has a good solution after all, I’d certain like to know about it.

Thanks for your help.

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When I blocked all unknown texts it was a while ago (years).  I cannot find this option on the website anymore.  There is a block all texts option but I do not see a block unknown text message from anyone not on your contacts list.  I would call Verizon and check whether this can still be done.

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Bigi wrote:

When I blocked all unknown texts it was a while ago (years).  I cannot find this option on the website anymore.  There is a block all texts option but I do not see a block unknown text message from anyone not on your contacts list.  I would call Verizon and check whether this can still be done.

My experience with Verizon support hasn’t been good. When I’ve tried to get them to deal with other problems, there’s either a 40 minute wait, so I give up, or I’ve ended up with someone who doesn’t know what he/she’s doing.

But I’ll try.

Thanks for the suggestion.

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You don’t say if you have an iPhone or not.

With an iPhone, see Block, filter, and report messages on iPhone. Choose your iOS. The link is for 17, but there’s a drop-drown menu to change it.

I am on iOS 17 and I’ve used the method described under the header “Filter messages from unknown senders”. It says to 1. Go to Settings > Messages; 2) Scroll down to Message Filtering, then turn on Filter Unknown Senders. Actually, under Message Filtering, you tap “Unknown & Spam” to find the button for “Filter Unknown Senders”.

If they are filtered, you won’t get any notification about them.

HTH.

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WCHS wrote:

You don’t say if you have an iPhone or not.

This thread is in the Android forum, not the iOS forum. 

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I’ve had an Android phone for years and I’ve had voicemails left by callers whose number I had placed on the blocked calls list. Those voicemails were mostly dead air because the robodialer hadn’t figured out that the call had been connected yet.

So, to test this out, if you have a home phone (landline) or a friend willing to help you out, place that number on your “blocked callers” list on your phone and afterwards try calling your phone from the now-blocked number. Your phone shouldn’t ring or tell you in any way that there’s a call from a blocked number. BUT, that call should instead go directly to your phone’s voicemail where the caller should have the opportunity to leave a voicemail.

Same thing happens with callers whose caller ID info is blocked due to your setting the “Mute unknown callers” option to “On”.

To sum up, if you place a number on the “Blocked callers” list on your phone, you won’t know they’re calling (or that they’ve called at all), but they should have the opportunity to leave a voicemail even when they’re on the list. Test this using a willing participant or your own home phone number. It’s as easy to remove numbers on the list as it is to add numbers to the list.

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I don’t have a spam filer per se. I use a free macro app, MacroDroid, which I set to mute all phone calls from unknown numbers. It’s performed quite well for me. The only people who have ever left me voice mail messages after their calls were muted were people who I knew, but who happened not to have been in my contacts at the time. (E.g., a doctor who called from his home.) I’ve never had a spammer leave a voice mail. Maybe I’ve been lucky, but I’ll live with that kind of luck.

The only downside to merely muting phone calls, instead of blocking them with some kind of spam filter, is that they end up being listed in the phone app as recent calls. But that hasn’t been a burden. I generally clear out all recent calls on more than a daily basis, anyway, and since all of them are cleared out in one fell swoop, it’s not burdensome that they happen to include muted calls as well as those from people I know.

But in any case, that’s phone calls. My current problem relates to text messages, which apparently is an entirely different thing with respect to whether they can be blocked.

And by the way, it wasn’t until I thought of mentioning that I had MacroDroid that it occurred to me that I should check whether that app can also be set up to block text messages from unwanted numbers. Its website doesn’t say anything relevant, and when I looked through its forum, no one suggested that it could do such a thing, but one guy specifically said that it couldn’t be done by any app unless it was the default SMS app. (No idea how knowledgeable he may be on this score.) He suggested using a free messaging app available from the Google Play Store.

I followed his link, which led to something identified in the store as “Mezo SMS AI — Spam Blocker, Text Blocker.” See https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.smsBlocker&pli=1  That page doesn’t say that it’s actually a text messaging app, as opposed to merely a text blocker (at least it doesn’t say so in words that I’d understand to be conveying that message), but some of the comments by satisfied users suggest that the former is the case. Those comments also suggest that the app isn’t free, although the store itself doesn’t say anything in that regard. But more to the specific point, one of the satisfied users, in a comment posted less than two weeks ago, says that he’s “been using the app’s ‘message content’ feature to block tons of political ad texts and other spam. It just blocks them if they’re not in my contacts.” So this app may be just the thing that I want, although I still have to check out some other apps, including the two that I mentioned in my earlier message, TextKiller and SpamHound.

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I have had great success with forwarding ( not opening, just forwarding texts) to 7726  (7726=SPAM) to carrier. It doesn’t stop texts from coming in, but it sure stops any further ones from coming to my phone! And it helps carrier log nefarious spammers. After the ‘fwd to spam’ , block the number. (ie on iphone, in text, top R arrow by the number takes you to ‘info, add as contact, etc. scroll down to “block this contact”, select. Then go back to text msg and “delete”/ swipe right or left, whatever you have set to.

I also use it for spam callers: I write the caller ph #down, manually text it to 7726, type ‘Spam from ph #: +1(xxx-xxx-xxxx)’ then block caller on my phone. Don’t forget the +1 or whatever shows up in your phone.

x’s being the actual number of course. This works not just for election periods, but for any sporadic mini flurry of spammers you get. I haven’t rec’d one in weeks/months. They stop instantly. Doesn’t prevent, but stops them. Peace after:)

7726 works with all cell phone carriers.

You say you are with Verizon in the US?

https://www.verizon.com/about/account-security/reporting-suspicious-text-messages-to-verizon

https://www.verizon.com/about/account-security/smishing-and-spam-text-messages

Sorry this doesn’t prevent receiving texts in first place, but it’s best we can do (I think during election/gov’t is legally exempt from blocking? ) Good luck.

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Thanks for the suggestion.

However, although if I get irritated enough, I’d seriously consider reporting spam, I prefer to simply block all text messages from unknown numbers, so I can experience the peace of mind that comes from thinking that such messages don’t really exist. Selfish, I know, but if I don’t have to be annoyed by having my attention directed to spam messages, that’s the way I’d like to live.

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As I’ve continued to receive unwanted political text messages, I decided to take your advice and report them to Verizon as spam. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work, and I need advice on how to do it.

This is a somewhat different question than the one that started this thread. I don’t want this new subject to get lost in the shuffle of the multiple messages that have already piled up in the current thread, so I’m going to ask how to do it by starting a new thread in this same forum.

Thanks for your help.

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I realized that my problem was spam emails that were going into texts.  This is how to stop that on Verizon website. https://www.techlicious.com/blog/verizon-aims-to-reduce-spam-text-with-free-new-text-blocking-feature/.

It happened when I got my iphone and the phone number belonged previously to someone else.   The emails/texts were of a nature that you would not want to receive!  Verizon says this is how most of the unwanted texts show up. I’m not sure if your texts are from emails?

 

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Thanks for the suggestion.

The Techlicious article links to a Verizon site which recommends texting “off” to 4040 in order to block text messages that originate in email messages. I don’t know what that really means, but what the hey, I did it a while ago, after I first saw the Verizon announcement, so presumably I haven’t been getting text messages that came from emails. However, since I’ve still been getting so many election text messages, I have to assume either that those messages aren’t from emails or that the 4040 solution doesn’t work perfectly. In either case, I’d still love to be able to block all texts from unknown numbers.

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