How to Set Up Your Parent's iPhone to Block Scam Calls and Texts
TL;DR
- To set up your parent’s iPhone to block scam calls and texts, turn on Silence Unknown Callers and Filter Unknown Senders first, then add your carrier’s free scam-blocking app.
- Older adults reported losing about $2.4 billion to fraud in 2024, roughly four times the 2020 total, per the FTC’s 2025 report to Congress.
- iPhone’s built-in filters miss a lot, because rotating numbers and “Siri Suggestions” exceptions let plenty of scam calls still ring through.
- Do it together in one sitting, and lock down the money too: transaction alerts, a trusted contact at the bank, and purchase limits in Screen Time.
- One concrete step today: open Settings, tap Apps, tap Phone, and switch on Silence Unknown Callers.
You’re setting up your mom’s or dad’s iPhone to stop the scam calls and texts, and you want to know exactly what to tap. Good. This is worth an hour of your weekend.
Here’s the thing to get straight before you start. Your parent is not the problem, and neither is their attention span. The scams have gotten really good. Spoofed caller ID, cloned bank numbers, AI voices. A setup that would have looked paranoid five years ago is now just basic hygiene. So do this with them, not to them, and explain each switch as you flip it. They’ll defend a setting they understand and quietly turn off one they don’t.
Why your parent’s phone is a bigger target than yours
Scammers sort by who answers and who pays. Older adults do both more often, and the numbers show it.
The FTC’s annual report to Congress found that fraud losses reported by people 60 and older jumped from about $600 million in 2020 to roughly $2.4 billion in 2024. The high end got much worse. Reported losses over $100,000 from older adults went up eight-fold in that stretch, from $55 million to $445 million. And because most fraud never gets reported, the FTC estimates the real 2024 total for older adults could be as high as $81.5 billion.
Imposter scams drive most of it. People reported losing $3.5 billion to impersonators in 2025, making it the single most-reported fraud category. Nearly one in three fraud reports was someone pretending to be a bank, a business, or a government agency. Most of those first contacts arrive as a call or a text. Cut the volume that reaches the phone and you cut the number of chances a scammer gets.
Start with the two switches that block the most scam calls and texts
Two settings block the biggest share of junk, and they’re both free and built in. Do these first.
Silence Unknown Callers. Open Settings, tap Apps, then Phone, then turn on Silence Unknown Callers. (On older iOS versions the path is Settings, then Phone.) Any number that isn’t in Contacts, that your parent hasn’t recently called, and that Siri hasn’t picked up from their email or texts goes straight to voicemail. The phone doesn’t ring. Real callers can leave a message, and the number still shows up in Recents, so nothing is lost. It just stops the interruption that a scam call depends on.
Before you leave this screen, make sure the important people are actually saved in Contacts. The doctor’s office, the pharmacy, the bank’s real number, close family. If a number your parent needs isn’t saved, its call gets silenced too. Five minutes of adding contacts here prevents a week of “I keep missing calls.”
Filter Unknown Senders. Open Settings, tap Apps, then Messages, and turn on Filter Unknown Senders. Texts from numbers not in Contacts move to a separate list and stop firing notifications. The scam text still arrives, it just doesn’t buzz and it doesn’t sit at the top of the inbox demanding a tap. For a parent who reads every message the second it lands, killing the notification is half the battle.
Turn on your carrier’s free scam blocking
Your parent’s carrier already flags known scam numbers at the network level, before the call even reaches the phone. Most people never switch it on.
Call the carrier or download the app. AT&T has ActiveArmor, Verizon has Call Filter, and T-Mobile has Scam Shield. The free tiers label or block calls the carrier has already identified as scams, which catches a wave of robocalls that would otherwise slip past your parent’s contact list. Turn on the automatic blocking of the worst-rated numbers while you’re in there. It runs quietly and needs no attention after setup.
Where iPhone’s built-in tools fall short
Now the honest part. The two Apple switches are necessary, and they are not enough. Here’s where they leak.
Silence Unknown Callers has built-in exceptions. If a scammer’s number showed up in an email your parent got, or in an earlier text thread, Siri may treat it as “known” and let the call ring. Scammers also burn through numbers fast. A robocall operation might use hundreds of numbers in a week, so a number your carrier hasn’t flagged yet sails right through. And Filter Unknown Senders sorts texts, it doesn’t read them, so a convincing “your package is held” message from a fresh number lands in the filtered list looking exactly like a legitimate one.
That gap is where a dedicated blocker earns its place. Not Today checks incoming numbers against a community database of numbers other people have already reported, so a scam number that’s new to your parent but old to everyone else gets caught. It also filters texts by keyword, so the phrases scam texts lean on (“gift card,” “verify your account,” “unpaid toll”) can be blocked no matter which throwaway number they come from. That’s the layer Apple’s contact-based logic can’t do on its own.
Lock down the money too
Blocking calls reduces attempts. It doesn’t cover the one that gets through on a bad day. So put a few speed bumps between a scammer and your parent’s savings, which is what AARP and the FTC both recommend.
Call the bank together and ask three things: set up transaction alerts so your parent (and ideally you) get a text on any charge over a set amount, add a trusted contact to the account, and lower the daily transfer and withdrawal limits. Ask specifically about holds on large or unusual wires, since that’s where the life-changing losses happen.
On the phone itself, thin out the stored payment methods. Remove saved cards from Safari autofill and from any shopping apps your parent doesn’t use often. Then open Settings, tap Screen Time, and use Content and Privacy Restrictions to require approval for app installs and purchases. That single toggle stops a scammer from talking your parent into downloading a remote-access app, which is a common move in tech-support and bank-impersonator scams.
Have the conversation the settings can’t cover
Settings block numbers. They don’t block the one call that reaches a person on a stressful afternoon. The best protection is a plan you agree on before anything happens.
Two rules are worth saying out loud. First: no real bank, government agency, or company will ever call and demand payment by gift card, wire, or crypto, and none of them will pressure you to act in the next ten minutes. If a caller does either, it’s a scam, full stop, hang up. Second: set a family safe word, a short phrase only your family knows, so that a panicked “it’s me, I need money” call can be verified in one question. We walked through how to set one up in this guide on AI voice-cloning scams, and it takes about two minutes at the dinner table.
Tell your parent to make you the boring second opinion. Any unexpected call about money, they hang up and call you first. Framed right, that’s not a loss of independence. It’s the same thing you’d do for them.
Run the checklist this weekend. Silence Unknown Callers, Filter Unknown Senders, carrier app, a blocker for the gap, bank alerts, and a safe word. An hour now against a phone that stops handing strangers a way in.
Not Today is a free spam-blocking app for iPhone. We built it to catch spam before it reaches you, using keyword rules, a community database of reported numbers, and optional AI detection. No account required. Download on the App Store.