One of the more helpful features Apple introduced with iOS 26 is a new filtering system designed to make users less likely to fall victim to a phishing scam over text. With the volume of texting scams on the rise, Apple made a point to keep iPhone users safe with its most recent iOS update.
The feature effectively divides up incoming texts by placing messages from known users in the main text thread and putting suspicious messages into a “Spam” folder that can be checked later. By default, messages from unknown numbers — such as verification codes from your bank or surveys from companies — will arrive in your main text thread. If you want those messages to be separate, Apple makes it easy to filter them out as well. To do this, open up the Messages app on your iPhone. Next, tap the icon with the horizontal lines (also known as a hamburger button) in the upper right corner of the screen. Once you do that, you’ll see an option to “Manage Filtering” at the bottom. Select that and you’ll see a toggle that gives you the option to screen messages from unknown senders. Once this toggle is on, non-scam messages from unknown numbers will appear in a separate folder titled “Unknown Senders list.”
All told, it’s a welcome feature that will hopefully lessen the likelihood of iPhone users giving out sensitive credentials to malicious actors.
Texting scams are more prevalent than ever
The sheer volume of texting scams over the past few years has exploded. And with good reason, it’s big business. As we covered in a previous post, texting scams over the past few years have generated over $1 billion for criminal cyber gangs in China.
Notably, a recent Pew Research study found that 61% of adults in the U.S. receive a scam text at least once a week. 20% of adults, meanwhile, say they receive a scam text every single day. I myself seemingly can’t go a few days without some sort of scam text clogging up my messages. And while some texts are easy to discern as being malicious, texting scams are becoming more sophisticated with each passing day, in large part due to AI chatbots like ChatGPT, which can make otherwise fake-sounding messages seem legitimate. And while we often think that older adults are the only ones prone to falling for phishing attacks online, the Pew study found that 26% of adults ages 18-29 reported losing money as a result of an online scam.
Consequently, it’s more important than ever to be vigilant about scamming efforts, which is why Apple’s new spam filtering scheme in iOS 26 is so important. However, that’s not all — Apple has also introduced a new safety feature, aka Memory Integrity Enforcement (MIE), with the latest iPhone 17 lineup to combat spyware — making users less vulnerable to scams.
