iOS 26 Can Help Stop Scams on iPhone 

Spam and scam texts are apparently all the rage. It’s tough to avoid them these days, and while many are quite obvious, some are deceptively convincing. All it takes is one successful spam text to scam you out of money or personal information. 

Apple’s latest update for iPhone, iOS 26, has a new feature to help prevent these messages from tricking you, and may help stop these scams from working at all. 

Once you update your iPhone, you’ll find some new options in Settings -> Apps -> Messages. There’s “Screen Unknown Senders,” a rebrand of the existing “Filter Unknown Senders,” which hides notifications from contacts you don’t have and moves them to a list called “Unknown Senders.” It’s a useful filter to weed out messages from unfamiliar users, but comes with the risk of missing texts from doctors offices and other automated (and legitimate) texts. 

That’s where a different setting can help. Below “Screen Unknown Senders,” you’ll find “Filter Spam.” This feature uses AI to detect likely spam. When it does, it mutes it, and sends it to a new “Spam” filter. In theory, this should be a win-win: “wrong number” and “toll violation” scam texts should be filtered away, without alerting you, while texts from legit sources should still come through. 

Once you update your iPhone, you’ll find the new filter in the Messages app. Tap the three lines in the top right, and you’ll see both “Unknown Senders,” as well as “Spam.” You can check both filters to ensure you aren’t missing important messages. 

The same Spam filter works for phone calls, as well. You’ll find the same three lines menu button in the top right of the Phone app, where you can see if the app filtered any likely spam.