Whether you’re receiving harassing phone calls, consistent wrong numbers, or someone has entered your phone number into an Internet spam machine, you might find it necessary to block certain numbers from calling and messaging you. Fortunately, this is fairly simple on the iPhone, which is a high-end smartphone from Apple. Though the iPhone does not have an integrated call-blocking feature, you can easily blacklist certain numbers using a third-party application called iBlacklist. Unfortunately, iBlacklist is not free, and costs $12.99 to purchase from Cydia. Your iPhone must be jailbroken, which is similar to “rooting” on an Android phone, and means that your phone has been unlocked so that you can install applications available from locations other than the Apple App Store.
Step 1: Touch the “Cydia” icon on your iPhone in order to open this third-party app store. Search for the “iBlacklist” app via the search field, then select it from the search results in order to open its page.
Step 2: Tap “Purchase” and follow the billing instructions in order to buy and download the iBlacklist app. After you’ve completed the purchase, you’ll be able to download the app, then close Cydia once iBlacklist has finished installing.
Step 3: Select the “iBlacklist” app from your iPhone to launch it.
Step 4: Touch the “Blacklists” link to view the list of numbers you have in your blacklist. Once the list is visible, tap “Add New Blacklist” to add a new number.
Step 5: Select either “Manual,” “Contact List,” “Recent Calls,” or “Messages” to select how you want to enter the number. For example, if you’re constantly receiving harassing text messages, choose “Messages,” then select the text message with the number that you want to block. If you manually enter the number, you’ll have to enter a name as well, otherwise a name will be inserted for you.
Step 6: Once you’ve added the number, open “Configurations.” Flip the red switch from “Off” to “On” to enable the blocking feature for that number. As long as the switch is set to “On,” all text messages and calls from that number will automatically be blocked.
Step 7: Select “Action to be Performed” and choose how you want the call to be blocked. If you still want to get voice messages from that number, but don’t want to hear the phone ring, choose “Straight to Voicemail.” If you don’t want the caller to know that he’s been blocked, choose “Busy Signal,” so that the caller will simply hear a busy signal. And if you want to make it obvious that you don’t want to talk to the individual you’re blocking, simply choose “Hang Up,” which will cause your iPhone to hang up each time the blocked number tries to call.
