Blocked Contacts Limit Reached

Why do you have so many numbers blocked? Spam calls and texts are sent from spoofed numbers that are rotated regularly. Blocking them has essentially no effect. Blocking is useful if you are getting calls or texts from a real number (e.g., an annoying ex, brother-in-law who wants to borrow money, college acquaintance you're really rather not be back in touch with). If you have more than 3000 of those, well, I don't know what to tell you.

That said, a number of people have reported that Apple Support has told them that the limit is now 3,000.

Chris Winkler1 wrote:

How do I sync between phone & Mac? I don't use my phone for mail, just for calls and the contacts are synced.

On your Mac, open the Mail app and go to Mail > Settings > Junk Mail > Blocked. Everything is listed there including the phone numbers and email addresses you have blocked on your phone and as long as the same Apple Account is used on both devices, anything you delete from that list will also delete from your phone. Bulk deleting is done by selecting the first one you want to delete, the Command - Click the last number to select the range to be deleted. Just press the "-" button or the Delete key, and they will also be removed on your phone.

Chris Winkler1 wrote:

There were only 9 contacts & 1400 unknown in Mail blocked, and it did not touch the 18 contacts and 3,151 phone blocked. I deleted 1 of the known contact in mail, and it did not delete in phone blocked contacts.

Is there any other way to get them off the phone besides 1 @ a time?

On your phone, no. If you have a Mac that uses the same Apple Account, you can bulk delete blocked contacts there and they will sync to your phone. Blocked contacts are linked to your Apple Account, not to any specific device or number.

If you would like to send Apple a feature request for bulk deletion on the iPhone, like what is available on the Mac, you can do that here. It could be a Clear All button or an Edit button where you can select multiple contacts to delete at once.

Feedback - iPhone - Apple

deejme wrote:

lobsterghost1 & IdrisSeabright, it’s not just phone numbers, it’s emails, too—which adds up to THOUSANDS easily. And fyi, the only two options on iPhone are 1. Block and 2. Report Spam & Block—if there was a way to ONLY report spam, we would do that, but those of us who have reached our limit, selecting Report Spam & Block gives us the same notice of reaching our blocked limit so who knows if it’s actually being reported for spam? If there was a way to easily delete in bulk on iPhone, that would be ideal for those of us who do not have a Mac. And, btw, please don’t talk in such a condescending way like we’re ridiculous for blocking. LONG before we knew that it was useless to block a phone number or email (and we were getting dozens of spam a day), we were told to block (that’s why it’s even an option), so we blocked people, and it adds up quickly over years.

So, unless there’s a way to bulk remove blocked contacts on iPhone, deleting one by one to remove thousands is not gonna happen, and like Chris Winkler1, I have no idea what my limit is I’ve reached because I deleted 20+ so far and I still can’t block somebody I want to. IMO, there shouldn’t even be a limit to blocking if we want to, to help keep down the spam and deter them from trying.

No one is being condescending in any way. I too once thought blocking numbers was the way to go. But I learned it doesn't do anything to stop spam calls. It's just a fact. If you took it as condescending, that's on you.

I'm well aware there are numbers and email address in the blocked list. I'm lucky as I have a MacBook Pro and I can delete multiple contacts on my Mac and yes, I understand that's not currently possible on an iPhone. But then, no one here posting is in any way associated with Apple, so we can't do anything to make a feature happen on iPhone. Only Apple can do that and currently, it's not an available option. Complaining about the inability to mass delete contacts here on this forum, won't be seen by anyone at Apple you'd want to see it.

Feel free to share your thoughts with Apple using this link --> Feedback - iPhone - Apple

The more people who provide feedback using the link, the more likely Apple will notice people are asking for help with this. Being annoyed with me or any user on a user to user only forum, however, won't get you anything.

If I didn't have a Mac and I needed to delete enough contacts to reduce the limit, I'd set aside a few minutes of the day for a few days to delete contacts. I was able to delete about 100 contacts quickly on my iPhone, just to see. It would only take a few days with only a few minutes each day to significantly delete contacts.

IdrisSeabright is 100% correct. Blocking spam calls is a waste of time and completely ineffectual. Spam calls are spoofed numbers and they change every time they call. What hasn't changed is YOUR number, so these calls just keep rolling in. But trying to block them won't reduce their frequency. I don't block them. I delete them and report them as Spam, which doesn't add to your blocked caller list.

That said, if you own a Mac, you can remove blocked callers in one fell swoop, by opening the Mail App > Settings > Junk > Blocked Contacts and use command A to clear the list.

Chris Winkler1 wrote:

Because I am bombarded by these calls, Bro.

Sister, everyone is bombarded by spam calls. It's one of the great annoyances of modern life. Start by checking to see if your carrier has a spam filtering app. Mine (Verizon) does. It has both a free and a paid tier. Second, use Settings>Apps>Phone>Screen Unknown Callers to mitgate the problem. I've found that "Ask Reason for Calling" does a pretty good job. Also, Settings>Apps>Phone>Call Filtering>Unknown Callers>On.

How am I suppose to know what is a real number or not?

If it's a spam call, it's not a real number.

Chris Winkler1 wrote:

I have two lines, one for personal and an eSim for business that does not get a lot of calls and I sure do not want that to screen unknown callers that might affect any business calls. What is the workaround for the eSim?

That's where the option to have the person give the reason for the call is useful. It won't screen out humans who need to speak to you, but it will get most of the robo calls (occasionally, they sneak through). As far as I know, the screening is done on a device basis but I don't have a second number so I can't test that.

Chris Winkler1 wrote:

There were only 9 contacts & 1400 unknown in Mail blocked, and it did not touch the 18 contacts and 3,151 phone blocked. I deleted 1 of the known contact in mail, and it did not delete in phone blocked contacts.

Is there any other way to get them off the phone besides 1 @ a time?

Nope. One at a time is the current method directly on your iPhone. To tell Apple you'd like a better way, you can provide feedback to Apple here --> Feedback - iPhone - Apple

lobsterghost1 & IdrisSeabright, it’s not just phone numbers, it’s emails, too—which adds up to THOUSANDS easily. And fyi, the only two options on iPhone are 1. Block and 2. Report Spam & Block—if there was a way to ONLY report spam, we would do that, but those of us who have reached our limit, selecting Report Spam & Block gives us the same notice of reaching our blocked limit so who knows if it’s actually being reported for spam? If there was a way to easily delete in bulk on iPhone, that would be ideal for those of us who do not have a Mac. And, btw, please don’t talk in such a condescending way like we’re ridiculous for blocking. LONG before we knew that it was useless to block a phone number or email (and we were getting dozens of spam a day), we were told to block (that’s why it’s even an option), so we blocked people, and it adds up quickly over years.

So, unless there’s a way to bulk remove blocked contacts on iPhone, deleting one by one to remove thousands is not gonna happen, and like Chris Winkler1, I have no idea what my limit is I’ve reached because I deleted 20+ so far and I still can’t block somebody I want to. IMO, there shouldn’t even be a limit to blocking if we want to, to help keep down the spam and deter them from trying.

Pmdarby wrote:

Why is there a limit? This needs to be addressed and changed immediately!

It stops users who think they are controlling Spam by blocking numbers. That is ineffective when the sending number/email is just spoofed and completely made up, where you are likely never to even receive any other communication again from that same location. It is just a text screen creating when spammers send out their communications. Your friends number can even be spoofed and a recent scam even spoofed the users own email address in an attempt to convince them that their account had been hacked.

There has always been a limit, so what has changed immediately for you? Is it that now there is a message telling you that the limit has been reached, where before nothing happened when the limit was reached and users thought they were still blocking numbers, even though they were not. That should tell you how ineffective it is blocking numbers for Spam control, because they had thought it was still working.

Chris Winkler1 wrote:

There were only 9 contacts & 1400 unknown in Mail blocked, and it did not touch the 18 contacts and 3,151 phone blocked. I deleted 1 of the known contact in mail, and it did not delete in phone blocked contacts.

Is there any other way to get them off the phone besides 1 @ a time?

Also, are you NOT syncing mail and contacts between your iPhone and your Mac? I currently have a little over 700 blocked on my iPhone. I see the same number on my Mac. I'm not concerned though as I will likely never reach the blocked contacts limit as I learned long ago that blocking Spam Calls is pointless.

Ps: NEVER assume the person you're responding to, is a "bro."

Here’s an easy solution: don’t answer any numbers you don’t recognize. If it’s a real call the caller will leave a voice message and you can call them back.

I have difficulty understanding why it is so difficult for people to ignore a phone ringing. Well, maybe not.

Back in early landline days phones didn’t ring; the caller had to shout into the phone to get someone’s attention. Callers adapted to a recognizable shout: “Halloo”: a fox hunting call. (Only people rich enough to go fox hunting had phones.)

Progress marched on, and the phone company chose to make phones ring. They experimented with different volumes and pitches; the goal was to find a sound hard to ignore, but not so annoying that people would smash the phone. Which is how the traditional ring was born.

in my country, if the law enforcement has to call me back, they inform me it will be from a no caller ID number to avoid the numbers they used being spoofed by scammers, there is no cellular security that stops them from making the call looks like it's from your parents or kids phones.