While most of us use FaceTime to chat 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 received through Apple’s FaceTime, and they can not even block all of these numbers.
As reported by Ars Technica, a significant number of users have regularly received unwanted FaceTime calls over the past few weeks. The people behind the spam calls use Group FaceTime to call up to 31 users at a time. If someone hangs up the call, the user immediately calls another number, so it becomes difficult to ignore the scam.
In the Apple Support community, dozens of users reported receiving several unknown calls on FaceTime. “Since then, I’ve received about 7 more calls during the course of the day,” said one user. “When I realized what it was, I got suspended and it called 11 more times,” another person said. Similar reports were also found on Reddit.
The high number of callbacks seems to be due to the fact that other people receive the call to call everyone back when the initial call fails shortly after they answer. As more and more people receive follow-up calls, they also start calling back.
Although you would think that it can be solved with the lock button, it is not as simple as it seems. Since FaceTime calls are meant to work just like regular calls, you need to block each number or Apple ID separately. There are no options to block multiple numbers at once or to only receive calls from people in your contact list.
Unfortunately, there is not much that users can do right now. Of course, users can disable FaceTime in the settings, but it also prevents them from using the app for anything else – and should certainly not be the only option for those who have received these annoying calls. Hopefully, in the future, Apple will add more filters for FaceTime calls with a software update.
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