Google Voice users shouldn’t have to worry about spam phone calls for much longer. Google said on Thursday that Google Voice will now label calls that are believed to be spam with a “suspected spam caller” label like the truecaller app.
Google Voice has made it easier to filter out spammers trying to call your number. Spam calls and texts have been a huge issue for years, and they aren’t going away anytime soon — according to the FCC, consumers in the US receive approximately 4 billion robocalls per month, and Americans had lost nearly $30 billion to scam calls in 2021. Google says the feature was designed to help protect you “from unwanted calls and potentially harmful scams.”
If users confirm the number as spam, all future calls from that phone number will be sent to voicemail and its call history will also be recorded in the spam folder. If users refute the call to be spam, the phone number will never be labeled as spam again.
The new label that says “suspected spam caller” will show up not just on the incoming call screen, but also in call history for future reference.
To figure out which calls should be flagged, Google is using the same artificial intelligence that powers similar features on its other phone calling apps, the company said in a blog post.
To note, the new label will only appear if your spam filter setting under Security is turned off. If it’s on, all calls Google suspects to be spam are sent to voicemail from the start.
The rollout comes after Google has made numerous improvements to the Phone app on its Pixel devices.