As the number of spam and fraudulent phone calls continues to increase, reliable caller ID services, especially those that can flag and automatically block known fraudulent phone numbers, are almost a necessity. Unfortunately, this isn’t something Apple provides natively, and there are some third-party caller ID services, but they can be hit-or-miss or come with additional charges. But finally, Apple has taken the first step towards such a service.
The company has announced that next year, businesses enrolled in Apple Business Connect will be able to sign up for a Business Caller ID (via Engadget). This will allow your company name, logo, affiliation, etc. to be displayed on the incoming call screen when contacting customers.
This makes it very easy to distinguish between legitimate calls and spam calls, because if you don’t see the logo, it’s likely a junk call. Having a logo will help the company calling you know if it’s likely to be the kind of response they want to hear from you.
good start
This is still not a perfect solution. Businesses have to register, and I can imagine many small businesses won’t, but at least it’s a free service so the barrier to entry isn’t too high. And of course, this only applies to businesses and not personal numbers, so not all genuine calls will be identified.
The system is not designed to specifically flag or block spam or scam calls, so these calls will still ring your phone.
Still, this is a big and overdue step in the right direction by Apple, and anyone who frequently receives calls from unknown numbers will probably be very happy about it.
It’s not clear exactly when this Business Caller ID service will launch next year, but as far as we’re concerned, the sooner the better.
