Siri Is Set To Fight Spammers And Robocalls In iOS 13

Apple's voice assistant Siri seems to be an effective tool to fight against the robocall epidemic soon.

There're several new features underneath the update page of the upcoming iOS 13 for iPhone users. Apple, in the meantime, has updated one called "Silence unknown callers" - which is described as the aim on using its homegrown voice assistant Siri to only receive calls from people whom users have contacted.

Put briefly, Apple has already referred to "Siri intelligence" but it's still unclear about what exactly it will entail - whether Apple just will limit incoming calls of people you know or utilize any spam numbers registries.

Both telcos in the US such as AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, and the FCC have been putting effort on fighting against spam calls. Those telcos offer free-to-use tools to block spammers and robocalls on users' smartphones. Through the "Call Protect" app, AT&T has offered a dedicated blocking solution. Apart from that, Verizon helps people with an inbuilt app named "Call Filter" for both Android and iOS devices, while T-Mobile rolls out the Scam ID as well as Scam Block features. In addition to these solutions, wireless carriers are said to block robocalls by default on Thursday.

It looks like that any help is welcome in the fight with this plague. Going along with those wireless carriers, other providers like Comcast have also launched similar plans and started implementing the STIR/SHAKEN - an FCC-endorsed technology for call verification across networks, either their own networks or rival networks. In the meantime, Apple will also update the upcoming iOS 13 with STIR/SHAKEN technology.

In January, a report disclosed the number of robocalls made across the US last year - which exceeded a staggering 26 billion.