it's pretty rare that there's somebody not already in my contacts that i actually want to be able to call me. they can go to voicemail, and i'll deal with it later.
Or your doctor's office is calling to let you know they suddenly have an opening this afternoon.
Or your Uber driver is calling to let you know you left something valuable in their car, right after they've dropped you off at the airport.
And so forth. I've learned from hard experience that silencing all calls from non-contacts bites you in the ass. There are legitimate calls that benefit you now, where going to voicemail defeats the purpose.
Generally they prey on people who cannot override their fear of missing out. It’s the “you may have already won!” trick in a different format.
You'd be making a bad bet.
Besides, who is taking that stance? I don't answer my phone if the caller isn't in my phone book, but that doesn't mean legitimate unknown callers can't reach me! They leave a voice mail, and I'm listening to it immediately after they're done.
How so? My phone notifies me that the original call came in, and also notifies me that a voicemail was left. If I'm in a situation where I wouldn't notice a voicemail was left, I wouldn't notice the call in the first place anyway.
Notifications (including voicemails) are just a short ping, jumbled in with all your other notifications. Because they're intended for async communication.
So no, by design, your phone is meant for you to notice somebody calling more than a voicemail being left.
Seems the other way to me and I would guess you’ve never tried it for any length of time. I get 4x as many junk calls as I get legit calls. If I don’t recognize your number, I send you to VM. My parents are elderly but they leave a message or send a text if I don’t answer. I add my doctors offices, city dispatcher, and similar numbers to my phone as soon as I learn them. It’s rarely a problem to hear a message and call back a few minutes later (except when they also don’t answer, in which case I leave a message and now have their number in my phone). Even works for large multi-location offices, who often show the same number no matter which is calling. My (adult) kids have been involved in emergencies and I see “City Dispatch” come up and I answer.
It’s just not a problem.
This is about silently rejecting all calls from non-contacts. You don't even know somebody tried to call, and any voicemail notification is easily lost among other e-mail and SMS and app notifications.
You're totally excluding your ability to respond to anything urgent unless you happen to check your voicemail notification at that very moment.
I'm glad your doctor calls all come from the same number -- mine don't at all. Nor do calls from delivery people asking where to safely leave a package, and so forth.
I'm glad it's not a problem for you -- I thought it wasn't a problem for me until it had negative consequences for me. So it's just to warn people, you know?
it's not. that's not how the iOS feature works. you still see it as a missed call, there's a notification saying it was rejected. it just doesn't ring.
This problem was solved when apple introduced ignore unknown callers.
They could improve on it slightly by allowing iOS apps access to breakthrough if they can prove its from an app somehow (like Uber or doordash), but really even that is an optimization not really needed.
For the phantom “what about my kid who’s phone is destroyed and is calling me from a strangers phone with seconds to live” you’d get the voicemail and multiple calls anyway.
That said, in recent years I’ve noticed a precipitous drop of these kinds of spam calls, so it may no longer be that big of an issue.
No need to exaggerate -- this is about restaurants and doctors and deliveries, things that happen routinely -- not hostage situations you've pulled from the movies.
So no, you don't get multiple calls, and the voicemail notification is easily lost among 10 other notifications from the past half-hour. That's the whole point.
No, the problem was not solved by Apple.
I add lots of contacts. The iPhone also tracks if you’ve ever sent or received a real call. So it’s pretty easy to maintain.
The other day I had some contractors working in the house so I turned it off for a day.
With this on, I get zero spam. And I’m way better off than with it turned off and getting 10-15 daily spam calls.
Family are in my contacts, problem solved.
As for group trips, turn it off for that day(s) and turn it back on. Those, for most people, I would think would be pretty uncommon, and manually switching it off and back on is a much better solution than always having to deal with robo calls.
For things like restaurants, I know that I'll be receiving a call from an unknown number and will just answer it.
For unexpected things, like Uber, they'll leave a message on my voice mail. I'll be notified of that as soon as they're done and will check it immediately.
That all works for me. It's a shame that I have to do all of that rather than just answer the phone, but there's no other option that I can see.
For sensitive times where I know I'm expecting a doctor/contractor to call, I'll just turn it off and set a reminder for later on to enable it again.
It’s only in the past year I was able to upgrade from 300mbps to gigabit, and it ain’t fiber. Also obvious that the local techs have no clue what they’re doing since the link goes down several times a night briefly, always at exactly 15 minutes after the hour. It’s obvious there’s a switch or something that they’re just rebooting every night.
One is a cell phone plan, one is an ISP.
Just imagine reporting to the police that a stalker is calling you from an unknown number, only to have the police call you on an unknown number.
Seriously, just ban anyone pretending to be another number unless the telco itself has set it up. The phone is essentially useless to me these days.
Bonus, if I happen to notice the phone screen light up with an unknown number and I know I'm waiting for a service station to call, I can always try my luck that it is actually legit.
About 6 months ago I started getting 10-30 calls per day so I really have no other option. Most of them are Medicare scammers (I'm not even old enough to qualify). I cannot fathom how:
1. The FCC/telcos have managed to allow anyone to spoof any number they like with no oversight and no (effective) abuse reporting system. This has been going on for years with absolutely no improvement.
2. Medicare is apparently so easy to scam out of money that all they need is my name and birthday to get money out of the system on my behalf. When I've answered and played along by giving them fake information, they always hang up as soon as they have these 2 pieces of info.
but for my life, it works.
Problem solved.