Have you ever been bothered by foreign phone calls or sellers? Apple Digital Technology wants to do something about it and is working on a way that the iPhone can automatically recognize and block these calls.
Anonymous phone calls can be anything. Usually these are vendors or call buttons. If you do this often, Apple may have the solution for you. In a new patent , Apple describeshow they can identify or even block these calls. The iPhone does the work for you, so you are less bothered.
Apple patent for blocking spoofing
If spammers call with a visible phone number, you can block such phone numbers on your iPhone . In many cases you can not figure out the number, so you can not block such callers. Many companies use spoofing, so that it looks like someone else is calling from another number. With the new system that Apple describes in the patent, the iPhone checks whether this number is genuine.
For example, via details in the so-called session initiative protocol (SIP) invite , an iPhone sees if a call is made via VOIP or via the normal Internet Multimedia Sybsystem. This indicates, for example, that it is a spoofed phone call. Other details can also be analyzed and used, to check whether the network of the call is correct with the original location. The system also uses the user's address book to check if the identified location matches.
Apple's alternative to Google's Call Screen?
The timing of this patent is striking, because Google announced a feature called Call Screen during the past Pixel 3 event. By making smart use of the Google Assistant, the recipient sees the answer to the call that the conversation is about. The assistant makes a transcription of the conversation in real time, so that you can decide whether to answer the call or not. As soon as a spammer calls someone who uses this function, he or she must indicate what the call is about. The user then chooses to hang up, to request more information or to report the call as spam.
So Google's Call Screen works differently, but the goal is ultimately the same: making sure that you only have to answer calls that are legitimate and useful. On the iPhone it is only possible to block spam numbers by using external apps. These apps keep a database of numbers. By comparing incoming calls, these numbers are blocked.
