The scam texts are out of control. The texts of the “DMV” on unpaid traffic offenses, the “transport authority” of your state on unpaid tolls, or “bad figures” are all bogus. Their goal is to make you talk or click on links to malicious sites in order to share sensitive information about yourself.
While crooks and phishers find new ways to afflict our smartphones with these texts, companies are starting to retaliate. Take Apple, for example: with iOS 26, the application of your iPhone messages obtains two key tools to prevent you from falling in love with scams, even if they cannot completely block these texts.
IOS 26 spam prevention characteristics
The new update, which is currently in public beta, allows you to sort your messages in a number of categories, including “unknown sender” and “spam”. When these flip -flops are activated in the messages of the messages, the messages sorted in these categories will not trigger notifications, so you will not be a ping about a message which is clearly a scam.
But it goes beyond the lack of notification. Any message that landed in the spam folder is placed under restrictions that do not normally apply to texts in messages. First of all, all links in spam messages are disabled. This applies to URLs and phone numbers. This guarantees that you cannot accidentally open a malicious link or start a call for the number of a crook. You will have to copy and paste the link or number to use it, which I believe that a majority of people will probably not do.
In addition, the messages will prevent you from responding to all the texts sorted in spam. Often, the crooks are looking for a back and forth to establish a report and convince you to reveal important information. By deleting the option to do so, the crook will not even be able to confirm that your number is active – a particularly good reason not to send scams text.
These are simple, but powerful changes. They remove the wind from the crooks, by eliminating the interactivity of their phishing texts. Whether someone deliberately or accidentally clicked on a malicious link in a spam text, the risk falls with this simple change in iOS 26.
What if a spam message is really not spam?
If you have already spent time in the spam file of your email, you have probably noticed that legitimate messages are sometimes reported among the sea of waste. This is also possible with this new spam filter. Apple’s technology can sometimes be wrong, and a text from a new friend or a company that you have not recorded in your contacts could be poorly placed in this file.
What do you think so far?
All the messages in this file, of course, cannot be answered, which in your opinion, would spend the end of communications between you and this person. (Sorry boss, I would like to send you a text, but my iPhone thinks that your spam, and iOS 26 does not let me answer the spam. See you soon on Monday.)
Fortunately for your boss, there is an easy solution: iOS 26 allows you to remove messages from spam to the back of the main messages. You can also point out that the message is not SPAM in Apple, which should theoretically help business sorting capacities in the future.
Just be careful when you use this feature: you do not want to accidentally put spam messages in your main reception box, and you certainly do not want to give the crooks of the advantage by marking real spam like no spam.
