Recently, we gave you the scoop on robocalls and the tactics that many of these illegal operations are doing to scam, confuse, and just generally annoy you. Unfortunately, spam calls have been on the rise in recent years, a sad occurrence as, just last decade, many thought that all unwanted calls were obliterated thanks to the National Do Not Call Registry.

While the government program has done a lot of good, it hasn’t stopped the most illicit of telephone scammers from flourishing–in fact, an astounding 3.4 billion of these robocalls were received in April of 2018 alone. Insane!

Of course, robocallers aren’t the only people who use cell phones as a tool to annoy or scam. Unfortunately, some more familiar folks use the phone as a method to harass–and boy, is it a scary scenario to experience.

We sincerely hope that either has never happened to you, but if they have (and the statistics say that they definitely have, by the way!), we want you to know that there are ways to stop these harassers forever. Today, we will be taking a look at how iPhone users, specifically, can take back control through the ‘Block Caller’ function.

There are two very simple ways that you can block a number from calling and texting you. The first way to achieve this is to add a contact to your blocked caller list. On iPhones, all you need to do is press your ‘Settings’ button. Once in the folder, select ‘Phone’, then scroll down until you locate the ‘Call Blocking and Identification’ function; select that and, finally, select ‘Block Contact’. Broken down in Apple-speak, the action will look like this:

Settings > Phone > Call Blocking and Identification > Block Contact

Another way you can block a caller is to visit the number’s page in your contacts list. For instance, if you want to stop your ex-friend Ned from calling you, simply locate ‘Ned’ in your contacts.

Next, select the ‘Block this Caller’ button. Upon pressing it, a message will pop up double-checking that you did, in fact, mean to block your ex-friend, Ned. If you’re sure, select ‘Block Contact’.

When performing either one of these functions, you are ensuring that you will no longer receive unwanted phone calls, messages, or FaceTime calls from any person added to the block list.

Of course, you will never have robocallers already saved as contacts in your phone, so when you receive calls from these types of numbers, you will have to take a slightly different approach. In these cases, select the Phone app and then press ‘Recents.’ From there, scroll until you find the name or number you would like to block. Once you have found it, press the ‘i’ button on the right-hand side of the number and then select ‘Block this Caller’. You can even do the same thing for unwanted texters, too!

Here’s what the action looks like in Apple-speak:

Phone app > Recents > i >Block this Caller

We hope that today’s information as empowered all of you iPhone users of the world. Don’t let those harassers bring you down–just block them instead!

What are your thoughts on the iPhone’s blocking function? Do you ever receive unwanted calls? If so, how do you handle them? Do you know of any other ways you can block unwanted calls?