the docs on reporting spam text messages in Messages is wrong.

Hey there Edward Devlin1,

Hope all is well, and thanks for the request for information.

In this case, you can filter iMessages from people who aren't saved in your Contacts. As you may know, filtering them and blocking them are different.

The reason they won't show up to sort in filtering, is because there is no need for a block number to be filtered. If you have the message still in your list you can manually delete the message. You should not continue to receive from the blocked number going forward.

If you have a message that was not already blocked or saved to your contacts, the system will try to determine if the message is possibly junk. This is when you should see the Report Junk option. However "Reporting junk doesn't block the sender from being able to send another message." You will need to manage the message accordingly. You can find out more about this here: Block phone numbers, contacts, and emails on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch.

If these features are not working as expected, you may be able to Contact Apple Support where you are located.

Best wishes!

The information in that article is talking about iMessages, the ones with blue bubbles. It does not apply to SMS (green bubble) texts, those are entirely within the purview of your cell service provider and Apple has little they can do.

You only have ones that have no color if you have jailbroken your iPhone. You can also tell which one it is by looking at the send button, if the background is blue it is an iMessage, if it is green it is SMS. I have never received an iMessage (blue bubble) spam message.

Then you do not have white bubbles....except for the little bubble that pops up with the 3 alternating dots when someone is responding. And I agree, the companies that are sending out spam don't use iMessage because that cuts out all the non-iPhone users. But Apple can only build in blocks and filters for iMessage because that is a closed system that belongs to Apple. SMS and MMS are systems controlled by cell service providers, Apple cannot write filter and blocked the same way they do for iMessage. You need to go after your congress critters and cell service providers to get them to do a better job of handling SMS and MMS.

And I should have clarified it is the outgoing bubbles that differentiate, the incoming ones are in gray but they are still either iMessage or SMS/MMS.

Why is that?