Need a way to forward unsolicited or phishing text messages.
please add option to 'right click' menu. adding 'block this caller' to that menu would also be a great help.
Will add this suggestion to Apple Feedback.
You can easily block iMessages and report them to Apple. You cannot do so for SMS texts because those are solely under the control of your cell service provider. Many of them have a number you can forward them to, for AT&T (and some others) it is 7726. They also have processes to block them. But not all providers handle it in the same way so there is nothing that Apple can easily program to do this. Contact your cell service provider.
You can easily block iMessages and report them to Apple. You cannot do so for SMS texts because those are solely under the control of your cell service provider. Many of them have a number you can forward them to, for AT&T (and some others) it is 7726. They also have processes to block them. But not all providers handle it in the same way so there is nothing that Apple can easily program to do this. Contact your cell service provider.
Send your feedback but not all cell service providers handle reporting them the same. You can easily forward them to 7726 I’ve done several of them. If Apple added a function all it could do would be to forward it to 7726.
If it is an SMS text (green bubble) it does not good to report it to Apple. You need to report it to your cell service provider. Contact them and ask the method they have to report it.
Forward them to whom?
If there's no way the phone knows in advance that any given message is spam or phishing, then how is it supposed to know where to send it to?
Additionally, even if there were some mechanism to detect this, the target company (e.g. your bank, Apple, etc.) has no way of responding to it - what do you expect your bank to do, for example, when they're notified that you received a phishing text? They can't prevent the messages from going out because they're not the ones sending it.
Even if one company 'solves' this problem, it would need to be universally applied in order to be effective - it's not much good if BankA build a response system if BankB and BankC don't have something similar - it will just generate a false sense of security because you assume that your bank is secured just because some other bank is.
Ultimately the whole spam/phishing issue is an industry-wide problem that requires an industry-wide solution. Ultimately I think this has to be carrier-level since they are the last mile (i.e. the ones that actually deliver the message), and so have the best visibility and chance to fix the problem. It does introduce all kinds of questions of privacy (for example, are you OK with the carrier looking at every text message you see just in case it's a phishing text?)
For mail, Apple has a email address the instruct us to forward any phishing emails (reportphishing@apple.com). The government also has a similar address (reportphishing@apwg.org). I have a group email called 'phishing' that I use to forward any phishing emails to both of these addresses. If there are others, please let me know.
All I am asking for is a similar mechanism for text messages. I would like the ability to EASILY forward a phishing text message, and ideally an unsoliciited text message, to some place that will look into the illegal practice.
In the meantime, making it very easy to 'block this caller' by adding that to the right click of an unwanted message would be very helpful. At least I would not have to deal with that caller anymore. However, I was looking for a more widespread solution to this problem. I don't know anyone who like unsolicited messages on their phones.
If apple could implement something on messages similar to mails 'mail thinks this is junk', it would be very helpful. I have a contact called 'spam' that I add junk senders to so if it comes up again, I can simply delete. However, having 'block this caller' on the right-click menu would be much appreciated.
part of the issue is that I'm also sharing the texts on my imac. there does not appear to be a way to even forward the message. I know about reporting to att. It is still cumbersome on an iphone. I would like to be able to right click on the message and select forward to forward to my provider. Additionally, I would like to right click and have the 'block this caller' option listed. These feature requests apply to imessage as well as messages on my imac. I am just looking for ways for apple to put the interests of their users first and make it super easy to report unsolicited and illegal texts.
reporting phishing or unsolicited texts needs to be easier
