Software

Mobile Apps

personally tested

Number Shield

Stop Caller ID Spoofers

No more unwanted Phone Calls!

Number Shield blocks unwanted marketing, robocall, debt collection and scam callers using custom blocking rules. Not only can individual telephone numbers be blocked, but also entire telephone number ranges. Some of these telephone pranksters use the telephone number range of an entire small town! Now they have no longer a chance to disturb you.

Developer/Supplier

Kinnaman Software LLC

Purchase Date

11.02.2023

Purchase Price

3.49 EUR (one-time; no subscription!)

Rating

***** (five stars)

System Requirements

iOS 12.0 or higher!
Compatible with iPhone

Languages

English

Support

By e-mail (English)

Features

Block annoying scammers who hide behind fake phone numbers.

Do you get unwanted calls or text messages from phone numbers similar to your own? With Number Shield, block an entire group of numbers at once. Just enter a wildcard for each digit you want to block.

For example, if your number is 714–555–1234, scammers might use a number like 714–555–6789. Block all similar numbers by entering 714–555–####. Wildcards and numbers can be combined in any order you choose. Block international numbers, too!

Use the “Allow Contacts” option to make sure you don't miss calls from your family and friends (optional).

Please note

• each number pattern can contain up to 7 wildcards, and up to 50,000,000 phone numbers can be blocked

• blocked calls are sent directly to voice mail
   (if mailbox is deactivated, callers get busy signal)

• blocked text messages are sent to the “Junk” filter in the Messages app

• iMessage messages are not blocked
   (I have deactivated for years for security reasons)

• when “Do Not Disturb” is enabled on your phone, calls that should be blocked may appear in your phone's list of missed calls

Setup

After starting Number Shield, activate the CallKit extension:
“Settings/Phone”, submenu “Block and identify calls”.
If you start importing a blacklist immediately after installing, the app will notify you right after the import.

Blocking Phone Numbers directly from the Caller List

  1. calling up the caller list
  2. tap the “(i)” at the very right of the telephone number
  3. tap “Share contact” at the bottom
  4. then tap on “Block Similar Numbers”
    (if not visible, tap on “Edit Actions ...” and select “Number Shield”)
  5. the Number Shield number entry screen is displayed. Tap “Done” at the top right to block calls from similar numbers or adjust the number beforehand if only a specific one is to be blocked or filtered by other pattern

Test Environment

I have successfully tested the call blocking function.
Number Shield version: 3.0.2

Experimental Setup

After Setup the App on all three iPhones

Simulation of unwanted Callers

Test Result

As expected, the simulated bad guys got a busy signal.
I could repeat this as often as I wanted, it was no coincidence but reproducible perfect function.

Practice

Friendly User Interface

Manual creation of number blocks is simple and convenient. Any dialogue with the user is simple and unambiguously understandable, although everything is only available in English.

There are four tabs at the bottom of the screen …

Blocked

The blocked phone numbers are listed here. Individual or all of them can be selected and deleted. Or you can add individual ones manually. Serves as a blacklist.

Allowed

Here you can add exceptions to the above blacklist. Numbers that should be allowed in any case, even if they would actually be affected by the blocking of a number range.If this concerns several phone numbers from your address book, it is better to simply activate the “Allow Contacts” switch. A whitelist, so to speak.

Help

Expandable; a FAQ seems to be planned.
So far there is only a “Contact Support” link here.
Nevertheless, it's a great solution, because a window opens:

Send support email
Send support email to
support@KinnamanSoftware.com

Send using email app (link to the E-Mail app)
Copy email address (to copy the E-Mail address to your own app)
Cancel

More

Here you can activate the blocking of text messages, import entire phone number lists or export lists already saved in the app (important function, as some manually added phone numbers can accumulate over time).
For safety's sake, there is the option to reload the block list.
This means that the existing list can be reloaded, which may be useful for a certain number of numbers (the app actually does this after every change anyway).
The display of the country code can also be activated.

I find the penultimate function in this menu very important:
Sort Options
• Sort by Number Pattern
• Sort by Time Added

In addition, the last function in this menu is:
Share App (link to the app store if the share target is suitable)
This makes it easy to recommend this app to others.

Pros

Cons

Conclusion

Number Shield is almost the only call filter that really works, and it's cheap and doesn't require a subscription. Today I was looking for an alternative to Call-Ranger in the App Store, because the unsorted blocklist was annoying me. I wanted to write to the developer, but first I looked curiously in the App Store to see if there was another serious app of this kind.

BTW: Apple does not check app submissions for functionality, but for harmlessness. That's why there are a lot of questionable app filters in the App Store with subscriptions and rip-offs that don't harm Apple's sales …

Alternatives

Call-Ranger by Konstantinos Papadakis

  1.  
  2.  
  3. Send my caller ID
  4. No Call Forwarding (prevents test-falsifying busy signal due to accidental self-calling!)
  5. Mute unknown callers
    1. on the iPhone Xs, I set the phone numbers #2 and #3 as unwanted
    2. on the iPhone 11 Pro, I set the phone numbers #1 und #2 as unwanted
    3. on the iPhone 14 Pro Max, I set the phone number #3 as unwanted
    1. the iPhone 14 Pro Max called via #1 and #2 the iPhone 11 Pro on #3
    2. the iPhone 14 Pro Max called via #2 the iPhone Xs on #4 and #5
    3. the iPhone 11 Pro called via #3 the iPhone 14 Pro Max on #1 and #2
    4. the iPhone Xs called via #4 the iPhone 11 Pro on its #3
    • easy to understand
    • clearly arranged
    • fast setup
    • quickly add new disruptors via the share function
    • import of entire phone number lists (as file or from clipboard)
    • exporting the blocked phone numbers
    • Phone number list sortable (number pattern or time added)
    • reliable function
    • before importing a phone number list, you have to remove country codes and the leading zero from area codes, because the app always adds these automatically

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