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While most of us use FaceTime to communicate with family and friends, there are people who use the app to annoy other users. Some users have complained about a large number of spam and prank calls they have received through Apple's FaceTime. The problem is, they can't even block all of the numbers.
Like Ars Technica reported, a significant number of users have been receiving frequent unwanted FaceTime calls over the past few weeks. The people behind the spam calls use Group FaceTime to call up to 31 users at once. When someone hangs up the call, another number immediately calls that user, making the prank difficult to ignore. On Apple's support forum as well as on Reddit, dozens of users have reported receiving multiple unknown calls via FaceTime. The report states:
Against spam and prank calls in FaceTime: A passable solution is missing
The high number of callbacks seems to be due to the fact that if the first call fails shortly after picking up, other people who receive the call all call back. As more and more people receive follow-up calls, they too begin calling back.
Obviously, the whole thing can't be solved by simply "blocking" the caller. Since FaceTime calls work just like regular phone calls, users have to block each number or Apple ID individually. There's no option to block multiple numbers at once, or even to only receive calls from people in their contact list. As a result, there's not much that affected users can do about it at the moment. Of course, users can deactivate FaceTime in the settings. But that's not a permanent solution, especially since they would have to forgo the service. So, it remains to be hoped that Apple will add more filters for FaceTime calls with a future software update. (Photo by hadrian / Bigstockphoto)
