Google Voice released an update that will give users a more convenient label to identify spam calls easier. A warning will appear on both call screens that will nestle below the incoming phone number and the history list of the user.

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A woman uses a smartphone in front of a laptop on April 3, 2019, in Abidjan. - According to the figures of the platform of the fight against cybercrime (PLCC) of the national police, nearly one hundred crooks of the internet, were arrested in 2018 in Ivory Coast, a country known for its scammers on the web, has announced on April 2, 2019 the Ivorian authority of regulation of the telephony.

'Suspected Spam Caller' Warning

As spam callers remain a huge problem despite different mobile phones releasing technological advancements in software and hardware for the past few years, XDA Developers reported that Google Voice is rolling out a new feature to fight this.

Google stated, "the warning makes this determination using the same advanced artificial intelligence that identifies billions of spam calls each month across Google's calling ecosystem."

With that, they will be using the same technicalities for Voice's new feature so expect less to see any big changes as they roll out this new update. Especially that the existing system has been working very well so changing or modifying the feature will not be necessary. 

Managing Spam Calls

A 'Suspected Spam Caller' warning will be shown to the end users' call screens and history lift to easily identify the suspicious caller among the saved contacts. Based on a report from 9To5Google, users can confirm suspected spam calls which can easily direct their future calls to be put in the spam folder. Users can also label a certain call as not spam and will not display the warning again once confirmed.

To manually set up this feature, end users will have to toggle their Settings > Security > Filter Spam. Once the feature is enabled, all calls that the system identifies as spam are automatically sent to voicemail, and will be put into the spam folder.

This will also add another effective layer when it comes to preventing and receiving spam calls. The new feature is now available to all supported regions. But Android Police reported that the warning will officially hit all Voice users by mid-January. 

Also Read: Twitter Blocks Google Voice Numbers from Two-Factor Authentication in SMS

Previous Incidents

Google Voice experienced setbacks before that frustrated its users, as they were prevented from making outgoing calls for a brief time. Last July, the application experienced a global outage that was experienced by the majority of its users.

The outage lasted for more than an hour around 4:12 PM until 504 PM Pacific Time. Customers tried to place a call during that period but they failed to do so. They were left with a generic notice that said "Number is not in service."

But Google Voice clarified later on that the outage only affected its voice servers, hence the prevention of calls. Because of this, SMS and MMS messaging services were safe from the problem and became the second option for the customers during that time. 

Google Workspace Status Dashboard announced an hour after the problem that the service and its operations went back at 5:27 PM. 

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