One such app is the free Mr. Number. It allows you to look-up any number and get a basic caller ID, location and a rating based on reports of fraud or scam. You can also take action to report or block and number you find to be fraudulent. Additionally, Mr. Number integrates with the Phone app. With the app installed, you can see calls marked as spam as their coming in and even more in your call history so you know immediately what you’re dealing with. To its credit, Android has had apps with these capabilities for a while. But for iPhone users, here is how to get started to take advantage of Mr. Number’s best features.
Mr. Number Caller Lookup
What’s fantastic about Mr. Number’s integration with CallKit is that you don’t have to do much work at all. If you receive a call from an unknown number that has been flagged by the community, the number automatically has a Scam, Telemarketer or similar label on it. This way, you know to decline the call and not even think about it. These labels also show up on your Recents list right within the Phone app. If you get a call from a number that Mr. Number didn’t mark and you’re still suspicious about it, you can just look it up in the app to see for yourself. Copy and paste the phone number, open the Mr. Number app, and paste it in the Identify tab. You’ll get basic caller ID and location information and a warning if the community reported the call as fraudulent. Mr. Number’s community is wide enough to nail most culprits. In fact, one recent call I received that has been marked as “suspected spam” in the app has nearly 400 reports from users. You can read through these comments too when you look up a number.
Block and Report Unwanted Calls
Once you’ve looked up a number and found issues, you can then take steps to report or block it entirely. Tap Report on the caller page to categorize the number as either general spam, debt collector, political, charity, telemarketer, survey, scam/fraud or extortion. You can also mark it as not spam if you find it was mislabeled. Then type in your comments about the situation. If you don’t want to contribute, you can just block the caller from ever being able to reach you again. Perhaps the best feature of all is Mr. Number’s ability to automatically block suspected scam or spam calls. In the Options tab you can select Block under scam calls and Block under spam calls to prevent any suspicious numbers from ever ringing your phone. This is a cool feature if you just want to download the app, block these annoying calls and never have to think about it again. Me personally? I like to let them call so I can see right on the caller ID if it’s a scam. Plus, if I’m in the mood to have a little fun, I’ll answer and play along with the game for a little while. Mr. Number is available for free on iOS and Android.
