Life’s busy enough without wasting time on calls that are trying to scam you or sell to you. Unfortunately, stats from Hiya show that 28 percent of the calls you get are going to be suspected spam or fraud.
On an iPhone, you don’t have the option to have an AI assistant answer calls for you, as you can on Android — at least not yet. But there are ways to screen calls to some extent and cut down on the number of scammers, sellers, and robots you have to talk to.
These guidelines have been written using an iPhone 15 Pro Max running iOS 18.2.
Identify incoming calls
Screenshot: Apple
iOS gives you several options for managing incoming calls.
Screenshot: Apple
You can choose to silence unknown callers and send them straight to voicemail.
A good place to start when it comes to avoiding unwanted calls is to flag calls from numbers that aren’t in your contacts list. It’s not a perfect way of spotting spam but will catch quite a lot of it.
From Settings on your iPhone:
Tap Apps > Phone > Silence Unknown Callers.
Toggle on Silence Unknown Callers.
Any calls that aren’t from a registered contact won’t make a sound or create a...
I’m guessing I’m not alone in getting more scam and spam calls than ever before. As a result, Google and the other Android phone makers have gradually added a range of built-in features to detect and deal with unwanted callers. These include having suspicious numbers flagged before you answer, being able to block nuisance callers, and even getting AI to answer incoming calls for you. Putting these protections in place should go a long way toward dealing with unwanted calls.
As usual on Android, different models offer different features. The guide below was written using a Google Pixel phone with Android 15 and a Samsung Galaxy phone with One UI 6.1. Other Android-based phones may differ slightly, but you should find a similar set of tools available.
Spotting scam calls in advance
Using a Pixel or other Android phone
When a call comes in that isn’t from a number in your contacts, the Google Phone app preinstalled on Pixel phones can send it to Google for checking. (If you’re not on a Pixel phone, you can still install the app on other Android phones.) Google says it “gathers various signals about the call” during the check — which I presume means cross-referencing it against a...
Don't uninstall those rarely used apps. Just securely stash them in the cloud until the next time you need them, and free up space on your phone in the meantime.
Even with the abundance of streaming services we’re using now, Windows PC storage can still fill up quickly. Games, photos, movies, and apps can take up significant chunks of room, and before you know it, that SSD is starting to run low on free space. And a cluttered PC drive can impact performance as well as Windows updates.
You don’t have to accept the slow decline of available storage space on Windows, though — there’s plenty you can do about it, whether that’s using built-in tools provided by Microsoft or keeping your files and folders better organized.
Managing files and folders
Screenshot: Microsoft
Windows can get you started with file organization — but there’s much more you can do.
If you’ve never given much thought to how your files and folders are organized, now might be the time to change that. Whether it’s a physical filing cabinet, a fridge freezer, or a Windows PC, having a system in place makes it quicker to get to what you want. It also means you can more easily identify data you’re done with and can safely delete.
The organizational structure you use is completely up to you. Windows itself gets you started with default folders for...
There’s plenty to consider when it comes to deciding whether you want to engage with the many generative AI bots now available inside our apps. These include the ethics of copyright use, soaring energy demands, and the diminishing of human creativity, to begin with.
Something else to bear in mind when engaging with these tools is they’re often going to use your flesh-and-blood human inputs to further train their underlying models. While some AI companies make efforts to anonymize this data, it’s something you may not feel comfortable with. The good news is, in most cases, you can find a setting to turn the training off.
Disabling AI training isn’t quite the same as wiping your AI chatbot history, though they are linked. Your chats can still be used for training purposes before they’re wiped, and you may well want to keep your chat history in place — but at the same time stop AI companies from using your data for model refinement.
Here are instructions on how to turn off AI training on several AI or AI-supporting apps.
ChatGPT
Screenshot: ChatGPT
On ChatGPT, you can refuse to “improve the model for everyone.”
While Google Assistant is going to be around for a while, the future of Google-powered digital assistants now seems to be Gemini. Gemini comes preinstalled if you buy a Google Pixel 9 phone, and you can install the Android app on older Pixels and non-Pixel handsets. There’s also now an app for the iPhone.
Whether you’ve already got it installed or you’re thinking about upgrading from Google Assistant, here’s what you can do with Gemini. (This was tested on a Pixel 9 Pro Fold.)
Pay or not?
You can grab the Gemini app for free for Android and iOS, sign yourself in with your Google account, and switch. As with Gemini on the web, the model you can access will depend on whether you’re willing to pay Google $20 a month for Google One AI...
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