In the US and the UK, users get a lot of sales and spam calls on phones, there have been several government backed campaigns to help reduce the amount of these calls that users get. Here in the UK at least TPS offers a text service allowing you to opt out of these calls. In America the FCC chief Tom Wheeler has requested to the biggest telecoms companies earlier this month to get rid of robocalls and other annoying calls.

Earlier today Google released an update for all Nexus and Android One devices allowing users to easily identify which calls are spam and then block them. The whole system works like a shared database, as soon as one person reports a call as spam it gets added to the database and the next person along will get the warning.

Your phone will even use this database to warn you of the call so you don’t have to answer it. The phone will show a red banner and “suspected spam caller” along with the number.

This new update is installed by default, but for any reason you don’t like this it can be switched off by opening the phone app, clicking the three dots then caller ID and spam protection and tap “off”

Google surely isn’t the first to do this type of thing, Samsung and Blackberry have had this feature for a good few years now and also Apple has a call blocking feature but not quite spam protection yet.

Source: Google Nexus Google+ post, TPS and Engadget