T-Mobile unveils two anti-scam network features, here’s how to enable them

Wireless carrier T-Mobile on Friday announced a pair of new anti-scam features aimed at blocking robocalls and scam calls on your iPhone or other smartphone. Called Scam ID and Scam Block, the new tools were designed to either automatically block incoming calls identified by the system as scam (Scam Block) or warn you that a call is coming from a mobile phone number possibly related to spammers (Scam ID).

With Scam ID, your call screen will alert you to an incoming scam call by displaying “scam likely”. And with Scam Block enabled, T-Mobile will stop scam calls before they ever reach you.

New T-Mobile ONE customers will automatically get Scam ID and Scam Block beginning April 5, but existing postpaid customers must enable the feature manually on April 5 or at a later date. The services will be available at no additional charge.

To enable/disable Scam ID/Scam Block when they launch, do the following:

  • Enable Scam ID—dial #ONI# (#664#)
  • Enable Scam Block—dial #ONB# (#662#)
  • Disable Scam Block—dial #OFB# (#632#)
  • Check Scam Block status—dial #STS# (#787#)

Scam ID and Scam Block use T-Mobile’s patent-pending behavioral heuristics and intelligent scam pattern detection technologies. Every call is checked against a global database listing tens of thousands of known scammer numbers.

The database is updated in near real-time.

Like with other anti-scam phone services, enabling Scam Block may also result in legitimate calls being incorrectly classed by the system as potential scam calls.

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These services are available on all devices on T-Mobile’s network.

MetroPCS customers will receive Scam ID and Scam Block later in April. Both services will roll out to all T-Mobile customers later this year.

It’s been estimated that three out of four people in the United States get at least one scam call per year, with fraudsters behind these calls cheating consumers out of more than half a billion dollars per year.

To learn more, visit t-mobile.com/callprotection.

Apple’s iOS 10 includes a new CallKit framework that, among other things, supports extensions for the Phone app to detect unwanted calls on the Lock screen, as show on Andrew’s video embedded above.

Source: T-Mobile