The best robocall-blocking solutions, though, come in the form of smartphone apps. All three major American mobile carriers have some kind of anti-robocall app for their customers: Verizon Call Filter, AT&T ActiveArmor, and T-Mobile Scam Shield. At their hearts, they all have the same basic functionality of identifying spam calls and sending them directly to voicemail, but there are some additional bells and whistles, as well.
Verizon Call Filter assigns a specific risk level to each call, allowing you to filter by how far along the risk continuum it is, and also gives you the option of what it calls the “neighborhood filter.” This allows you to block numbers similar to yours and/or a specific area code and prefix/exchange combination. Meanwhile, for Scam Shield, T-Mobile claims to use “A.I., machine learning, and patented technologies” to block calls from bad actors, with its anti-spam database updated every six minutes.
For those looking for Android apps for blocking spam, Google’s dialer, Phone by Google, has anti-spam protections — as does its Messages app — but there are also various dedicated anti-spam apps for both Android and iPhones. We have our own round-up of the best anti-spam call apps from 2017 that you can check out, but some of the most highly recommended options include TrueCaller, Hiya, and Mr. Number.
