One Button Only Apple When It Comes To Unwanted Spam Calls

I know from the many complaints I’ve seen around social media that far too many of us are receiving unwanted phone calls from supposed loan officers wanting to hook us up. I bet I’ve gotten hundreds of these since this wave of spam and fraud began earlier this spring. I’ve written in the past about the changes Apple made to its Phone app, (here and here,) designed to help with the avalanche of unwanted calls such as these. I’m not sure the new system is an improvement, though. As Cupertino gets ready for WWDC 26, I’m hoping Apple will actually take a much stronger step. Actually it should be the step to end it all.

One button. Just give us one button, Apple, to block, report, and delete any unwanted call and associated emails. Make it fun. Maybe license the “One ping only” line from The Hunt for Red October and put that on the button. Make purging spam fun, not tedious. One ping only, please.

At the moment in order to ban any trace of an unwanted call that leaves an AI generated voicemail you have to take three steps. There’s no third time is the charm here.

To get rid of that voicemail, you have to open the transcript and choose Report Spam And Delete to nuke it.

You then need to go to the Unknown Callers screen and Block and Report spam by swiping left to reveal a little orange hand that is the Block button, and then choose to Block or Block and Report Spam.

And then you need to delete the call itself from the Unknown Callers screen. Or you can Delete And Report Spam.

I don’t think a system needs to be artificially intelligent to know that if I choose to block a number in one place, I’m not that keen on seeing it anywhere else.

Bottom line, there should only be one button. No need to slide to find it. Put it right there in the Unknown Callers screen that will Block, Report, and Delete any trace of the offending call. Give us the options, sure, but in one place, from one button.

FWIW, the same could be said about Messages. One button, only. That’s all we need.

Make it simple, Apple. Simple works.

You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above. This site does not use affilate links.