Messages In iOS 8.3 Beta Feature Automatic Spam Reporting

We give our phone numbers out to so many people including friends, family, people we’ve just met, companies, and so on that it really doesn’t come as a surprise that one day a marketing company gets hold of our number and tries to sell us something. We’re sure more often than not many of you guys have received similar spam messages on their phone.

Now the good news is that if you’re an iOS user, the folks at AppleInsider have discovered that in the latest iOS 8.3 beta that was rolled out, it seems that automatic spam reporting is a new feature in the Messages app. As you can see in the screenshot to the right, getting a message from someone not on your contact list will offer users the “Report Junk” option.

Basically clicking this feature will let you delete the message and flag it as junk, thus blocking it straightaway. This is more efficient than Apple’s previous method which involved taking a screenshot of the number and message and sending it to Apple’s support in order to block it. Considering that spammers probably have multiple numbers, this doesn’t seem particularly efficient which is something this new feature will change, hopefully.

No official word on when iOS 8.3 will be released, but it has been speculated that the operating system is expected to be released by the 24th of April which is when the Apple Watch will be released to the public.

Tyler Lee
Categories: Apple, Cellphones
Tags: Apps, iOS 8.3