Google Voice Now Provides Spam Protection

There’s nothing more scandalous than getting a brand new phone number that formerly belonged to a deadbeat who did not pay her debts.  That’s what happened to Janna when we bought her a new 212 Area Code phone number and hooked it into her Google Voice account.

I spend a lot of time blocking a multiplicity of calls a day for Janna on her Google Voice account. Citibank and American Express and other dunning servers are relentless in their want to get paid, but they are leaving their nasty messages on the wrong phone number. They do not care that they are calling the wrong person.

I was so happy to read this week that Google Voice are now stepping up to officially help us swat away these unwanted Spam callers.

If, like me, you have more interesting ways to spend your time than talking to telemarketers, the “Report Spam” button in Google Voice is probably your best friend.

But wouldn’t it be great if the filtering could happen automatically, before unwanted calls even reach your phone, the same way Gmail filters spam before it gets to your inbox?

Thanks to the help of the thousands of Google Voice users who mark calls as spam everyday—and our own spam identification tools—it is now possible to automatically redirect calls, texts, and voicemails from any of the numbers in our database directly into your spam folder.

…If a number ends up incorrectly marked as spam, you can easily unblock it by selecting the message and clicking the “Not Spam” button in your spam folder.

Here’s how you enable Google Voice Spam protection.  Go to SETTINGS | VOICE SETTINGS | CALLS and then scroll to the bottom of the screen and click on the “Global Spam Filtering” checkbox.  Then click on the “Save Changes” button to enable the protection.

In the span of writing this article, you can see three calls that were quietly marked as Spam by Google Voice Spam — and that means I don’t have to mark those callers as Spammers. I also don’t have to worry about getting false “New Call” notifications from Google Voice.

I can’t wait for Google Voice to take the next step and start charging for phone calls and new services.  I want a Toll-free fax line.  I want multiple phone numbers.  I want auto-attendants.  I want Vanity numbers.  I want to run everything through Google Voice and I want it all now!