Download the article Plus, how to recover texts that were mistakenly reported as spam
This article was co-authored by wikiHow writer, Hannah Dillon. Hannah Dillon is a technology writer and editor at wikiHow. She graduated from North Dakota State University with a bachelor’s degree in journalism in 2013 and has since worked in the video game industry as well as several newspapers. Hannah has had a love of writing and technology from a young age and hopes to use these passions in tandem to help others through the articles she writes for wikiHow. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of all facts cited and confirming the authority of its sources. Find out more…
If you’ve accidentally tapped the “Report Spam” button on a text message that isn’t spam, you may be wondering how you can unsend that report. Unfortunately, there is no way to revert a spam report, but rest assured that reporting text as spam by mistake will not affect you or the sender. In addition, you can restore texts that were accidentally reported in a few simple taps.
If you accidentally report a text as junk, you might worry about the sender being listed as a spam sender. Fortunately, that’s not the case—Apple and your carrier are good at deciphering numbers that are actually spammers. Although it sounds serious, sending a bad text report will have no negative effects.
Marking text as junk deletes it and forwards the information to Apple. The transmitted data includes the number of the sender and the content of the messages. If you use an iPhone or iPad with a cellular plan, this information will also be sent to your phone service provider.[2]
Marking a text as junk does not prevent that number from contacting you. The only way to stop a number from messaging you is to block it. To learn how to block someone’s number on your iPhone or iPad, read this wikiHow.
You can mark only certain texts as junk. If the sender is in your contact list or you have replied to the message, you cannot mark it as spam. However, if you delete multiple messages at once and select a conversation that is eligible for reporting and one that is **not** eligible for reporting, the option to report messages as junk will still appear.
- The only messages that will be reported as junk are those that meet the reporting requirements.
Accidentally reporting a text as spam will not negatively affect the sender. Although it sounds pretty serious, reporting text as spam by mistake will not affect the sender.
- Mobile operators use algorithms that rely on machine learning to determine which numbers are likely to be spam.[3]
The two things these algorithms look for are quantity and frequency, so a number reported once or twice by accident is unlikely to be added to the list of known spam numbers.
- Mobile operators use algorithms that rely on machine learning to determine which numbers are likely to be spam.[3]
Open iPhone settings and select Messages. Message filtering will sort your messages into two folders: one for messages from your contacts (known senders) and one for messages from unknown senders.
Scroll down and switch Filter unknown senders. With message filtering enabled, when you bulk delete conversations from your Known senders folder, you won’t get the option to report them as junk.
- This is because you cannot have a mixed selection of conversations from known senders (which cannot be reported as spam) and unknown senders (which can be reported as spam) when deleting from Known senders map.
Categories: How to
Source: HIS Education