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Google’s Phone app will now tell you if a spam number is calling

Google’s Phone app will now tell you if a spam number is calling

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We're living in the Age of the Robocall. The spam calls reached an all-time high this year and FTC complaints increased 50 percent year-over-year. We have apps to help combat these calls on our phones, but for those of us who'd rather not receive them at all, we've been out of luck. Telecoms haven't put any protections in place to keep the calls at bay on the network level. Also, third-party apps aren't the most ideal solution.

While we wait for robocalls to be blocked before they ever reach our phones, Google is stepping in to help its Nexus and Android One users.

The Phone app on those devices will now warn users when a phone call might be spam. Caller ID and spam protection is on by default for the Phone app but can also be turned off in the options menu. Users can also help the cause by marking calls as spam, too. This more or less works like a third-party app, but because it's native to the device, phone owners won't have to do much to ignore the robots.