Pixel Smartphones Automatically Route Spam Calls To Voicemail

Nobody likes receiving spam calls. They’re a waste of time and unfortunately, there are still people who fall victim to such calls and end up being taken for a ride. Google wants to make it more difficult for scammers to trap people which is why it’s enabling Pixel smartphones to automatically route spam calls to voicemail instead of letting them ring on the handset.

The Google Phone app already has the capability to flag spam numbers and inform users with a bright red screen when they’re receiving a call from a number that’s flagged as spam. This new feature takes things up a notch by sending these calls straight to voicemail. This means that the user is never disturbed by spam calls and won’t even get a missed call notification for them.

The efficacy of this feature depends upon Google’s ability to accurately identify spam calls on at ongoing basis. The scammers will likely try to come up with ways to circumvent these protections as well, so this cat and mouse game will continue.

This feature has been rolled out to the company’s Google Phone app on Android. Google smartphones like the Pixel services as well as Nexus and Android One devices ship with this app by default as well. Other Android smartphone owners have to manually download the Google Phone app from the Play Store.

Adnan Farooqui
Categories: Cellphones
Tags: Apps, Google, Pixel