Blocked caller still ringing through to iPhone 5S

From Lawrence Finch posts:

"You don't block contacts, you block numbers."

"So instead block the numbers. I suspect blocking a contact only blocks the first number."

Actually, that's not correct. The concept---when working properly---is that you're blocking a Caller, regardless of which number they're dialing from or how many numbers they own.

If you go to Settings > Phone > Blocked, you'll see what I mean. If using your method, Lawrence, you'll see a list of phone numbers. When using the method jkfrench and I do (saving the offending numbers to a common "telemarketer" contact card), you'll see those entries listed by name.

Ex:

• I have a contact named A: JUNK CALLS (the A: prefix pins it to the top of my Contacts list)

• This contact has 17 unique phone numbers associated with it

When scrolling through Settings > Phone > Blocked, I see "A: JUNK CALLS" listed 17 times---once for each number associated with that name.

Like jkfrench, I wondered if there was a limit to how many numbers could be associated with a single contact name before blocking failed to work. Well...I created a second list (A: JUNK CALLS b), added a couple of numbers to that as they came in, but alas...still didn't work. The phone rings, their Contacts name appears on the screen, but no block triggers.

Very frustrating.

Check your Do Not Disturb setting.

Settings : Do Not Disturb

Manual : On

Allow Calls From : Favorites

Repeated Calls : OFF

Silence : Always

It appears Apple made many changes in IOS9.1 and might have needed to (re)set some settings.

I hope this helps you.

BINGO! I found the magic bullet.

1. First, block the individual number...

2. ...THEN add it to whatever Contact card you prefer

Doing both steps, in that order, has completely resolved the problem for me. :::whew!:::

Hope it works for you too.

paperqueen wrote:

BINGO! I found the magic bullet.

1. First, block the individual number...

2. ...THEN add it to whatever Contact card you prefer

Doing both steps, in that order, has completely resolved the problem for me. :::whew!:::

But why bother with step 2? Blocking the number blocks them. There's no need to add the number to a contact. What is the benefit of having a contact full of blocked numbers? The phone already has a list of your block number in Settings>Phone.

While not everyone needs/wants to categorize junk callers, some of us do. As an example, my 95 year old grandmother has been the victim of Jamaican scammers; for that reason, her landline calls were rerouted to my cell phone for a couple of months, so we could prevent them reaching her while logging their activity for the authorities. Keeping all of those spoofed numbers in one place was ideal.

Also meant their repeat calls flashed on the iPhone screen as "Junk--Grandma" (remember, this thread began because calls blocked at the card level were still ringing through).

Except for your somewhat unusual use case, I still don't see the point, for most people, of bothering with the extra step. But, whatever works for you.

Indeed the phone appears to work on a number list, not on a contact list. When you tell the phone to 'block a contact', the phone copies the numbers associated with the contact *in that moment* to the list of blocked numbers. So just adding a new number to the contact afterwards will not add it to the list of blocked numbers. You can, however, go into Settings > Phone > Blocked, remove the blocked contact and then readd it. Then all the numbers associated with it will be copied into the blocked list.

Not very intuitive, it would be a lot better to allow blocking contacts in the true sense.

This has been happening to me in the past couple of months, very annoying! So today when I received a call from a previously blocked number I looked at a number of possibilities. I discovered that when using the "Block this caller" directly from the recent call log, it automatically added the "1" prefix to the blocked call number, even if that prefix doesn't show in the caller ID. However, when I tried creating a new contact from the recent call log, that "1" prefix was not incuded in the contact record. It remains to be seen if this works. I guess if it works I won't know since the call won't go through! I'd be interested to see if anyone else has tried this alternative method for blocking unwanted calls.

This has been bugging me too. A call from a blocked contact today triggered a google search, and this thread.

Thanks to the advice here, it does look like the theory Zundix posted is true. I had a "blocked" and a "blocked2" contact - I'd previously had a theory that only the first 10 numbers were actually blocked, which didn't prove to be the case.

When I checked in settings - phone - blocked, I had one row for Blocked, and one for Blocked2. I removed both, and re-blocked them, and now I have a row for each number I've got in each contact.

In short, every time you add a new number to a blocked contact, you have to unblock and reblock to get them to work.

It seems like managing these for each number might be the better way to go. The old tip of having a blocked contact that you just keep adding numbers to doesn't seem to work on the later versions of iOS.

Actually, I found that you do not actually need to remove and readd the contact. You can just add it again, the new phone numbers will be added and the previous ones will be retained.

In other words:

- get unwanted call

- add number to unwanted callers contact, containing many others

- readd contact to blocking list

This is the key. They are storing the blocked numbers separately from the contact, and that list just gets updated with the existing list at the time that you block the contact. Anything added later is not added to the blocked list. So I understand what's happening there, but it would be nice if they just referenced the contact in the list of blocked callers rather than the individual numbers.

Another thing I just noticed is that if you go into the Contacts app to access a contact, the "Block this caller" option isn't there. It's only an option when you access contacts via the Phone app.

Wow...17 unique numbers for your Junk Calls contact...I wish...

I have over 100 unique numbers (and some fake area codes) for my "Unknown Caller" contact, one of those numbers called me this morning and got through. I tried to implement paperqueen's solution, and when I clicked the i in the circle, guess what? It took me to my Unknown Caller contact where the number was plainly listed. And at the bottom of that contact? UNBLOCK this caller - which means - it's supposed to be blocked.

I'm getting many calls a week from these robocallers. The phone is listed on the do not call list (BIG HELP...not really!)

HELP ME OBI WAN TIM COOKIE, YOU'RE MY ONLY HOPE! I'm a loyal Apple fan, but I'm at the end of my rope. I'm considering jail breaking or (heavens forbid!) an Android solution.

I'm getting daily "search engine junk" phone calls even though I added the number to a contact that is blocked. If I understand the thread above, blocks are done by number rather than by contact. And that when you add a number to a contact list that already is set for blocking, that number isn't added to the blocked list. That's not how I would have implemented the feature.

In the future, I'll just block the number when the call comes in rather than adding them to a contact list (I have a few such lists).

But what I just did to each of my junk contacts was Unblock this Contact (potentially letting through any number in that contact for a few moments) and then Block this Contact (hopefully blocking all numbers currently in that contact). It sounds as though this should work. I don't have a good way to test whether it really does work. If I get a Search Engine Junk call, I'll know that it doesn't work. But it was easy to unblock and then block.

I have this problem on my iPhone 6 Plus, iOS Version 9.3.4, This seems to be a bug in Apples call blocking implementation which is based on numbers, not contacts. You can see the list of blocked numbers if you go to

Settings > Phone > Blocked

At the time when you block a contact it will copy all of the numbers over to the blocked numbers list. But if you add a number to a blocked contact at a later date it will not get automatically added to the blocked numbers list.

Apple could fix this 2 ways:

1. If a number is added to a blocked contact then also add it to the blocked contact list.

2. Allow the blocked list to include numbers or contacts, when you lookup the caller/contact to display it on the phone as it rings check if the contact is blocked and disregard the call.

You can temporarily fix this by unblocking and then blocking the contact which will correctly copy all of the numbers to the blocked numbers list.

I used to just block spam, but decided to create a "blocked" number to keep better track of which phone numbers are blocked.