Many iPhone-using people have reported receiving a lot of spam while doing FaceTime group calls. It has increased a lot.
Ars Technica revealed that many people using iPhones had witnessed spam calls while doing FaceTime group calls. And it has mostly happened during the late hours of the night.
It may be due to Apple’s lack of restrictions in the video calling app in its smartphones.
The growing spam problem in FaceTime
Spammers, or in other words, the “pranksters,” have learned to take advantage of one loophole inside FaceTime settings.
Apple, as of now, doesn’t give an option of allowing video calls only from contacts within a user’s address book. Thus, an unknown stranger can bombard any other person’s group video calls.
Well, there’s an option to block unknown numbers, but it can be tiresome most of the time. There’s no dedicated privacy-based feature only to allow known contacts to make FaceTime calls to a user.
Furthermore, even if you block a spam number, it’s still visible in your group call!
It’s happening to a large number of iPhone users for the last few days, and they are irritated.
Mentioning the problem, Ars Technica, in its report, wrote:
“As described by one Apple Support forum user, the spam calls have been ongoing non-stop, and as a result, they’ve blocked more than 300 numbers.”
What’s interesting to note is that it’s not a recent problem. Issues of receiving spam group calls have become entirely known since March last year.
But it’s strange why Apple hasn’t brought any solution to this serious problem so far.
Privacy at risk despite a privacy-driven iOS!
The issue is significant since Apple’s latest iOS 14 software is all about a user’s security and privacy.
However, what’s happening now with the FaceTime app is something unusual to expect because Apple is constantly working towards providing a spotless and secure experience to its customers. Especially after the launch of the iOS 14 last September.
The company even added the feature of completely blocking ad-tracking by an app in its iOS-enabled devices.
So it doesn’t make sense that it left its FaceTime video calling app free of such crucial privacy-based options and settings.
Why?
The California tech giant must notice the issue as soon as possible because it won’t take long for the iPhone users to move to a rival app for doing most of their calls instead of the native one.
A WhatsApp-like situation will become inevitable if nothing gets resolved in the coming months. Most probably, it must happen with this year’s new software version, iOS 15.
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