Number Shield 4+

Mostly Good, Somethings Not Good

Starting with the good: Blocks numbers of my choosing rather than a community database. Blocks up to 5 entire area codes (goodby DC). Blocks neighborhood spam numbers. And my favorite- Adds allowed numbers by wildcard (adds all numbers from a PBX, like my healthcare provider). Have not seen that anywhere else. And more - simple clean interface, no ads, no nagging to upgrade, etc.

The not so good: Very slow updating when the list is large. Just adding or removing a single number takes too much time. I get the feeling that updates are done by “starting over”.

Great App

This is still one of the best cures for robocalls. I’m surprised it doesn’t get mentioned more in the press. My original review is shown below.

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This app is just what I was looking for. There are several highly rated subscription apps that handle robocalls and known scammers. However, I don’t get so many calls that I mind manually blocking these calls. What drives me nuts, however, are the calls from a range of numbers that are probably coming from the same entity. This app is perfect for this situation. I have been trying to keep the ranges down to a few thousand numbers because I think the developer said that Apple will only allow one million blocked numbers. No problem—this should do the trick. Did notice one glitch when setting up my iPhone X. The second number entered will keep the app loading. To fix this I just force quit the app, and all subsequent numbers entered fine.

Developer Response ,

Thanks for the great review.

Works but doesn’t help

I’m torn here. Ever since upgrading my phone I’ve gotten 5+ spam calls every single day. On the one hand, this app works for blocking numbers in certain formats. However, it doesn’t matter. It’s like the spammers know what I’ve already blocked and just use a different area code+first three.

If we had enough “blocks” to be able to block a ton of area codes I think it would look better, but unfortunately with the limit there are just too many remaining options.

As someone with a phone number from a state I haven’t lived in in over a decade, I would love to just block ALL numbers from that state that aren’t in my contacts. I think that’s the only thing that would really work and I would pay extra for that.