CORONAVIRUS WEEK 30: SPAM TEXTS NOW FLOURISHING

It has not been a good week. As for the pandemic, the cases are rising (as they appear to be in many other countries) and full lockdown is immanent.

However, my  headache this week was the fact that I responded to an O2 (my iPhone provider) text which turned out to be a spam "Oh yes, it is very common....".  Well  it never entered my head to question it.  Here is the text and I put it here to raise awareness of what is becoming an increasing problem.

After notifying the bank that there might be a problem I tried to facilitate "Block This Caller' on my iPhone SE Version 13.   I had great trouble doing this and I now realise that because my iPhone was updated about 5 months ago the method for doing this has changed.

Below is the image which shows where this facility is accessed.  After tapping the i with a circle around it (which is what you get when you tap the phone number) this screen comes up.  Very close the the telephone image (for a return call) is the  greater-than sign. This is what you tap to get to get to the "Block This Caller" page.  I would advise using a pencil so as not to make a mistake due to the close proximity ... another candidate for my Book of Bad Design!

Now all this is fine but really what is needed here is a sort of 'Mind Set' to ask the  right questions which are to do with trouble-shooting (which I am not good at!)

I would have saved myself a lot of time and distress if I had said to myself (having realised that I made a mistake  which needed sorting):  What kind of iPhone do you have? i.e. what model/version etc.  OK.... What is the answer you are looking for?  Activate the verb when googling "to block a text on iPhone 13 ...".

I found the answer on 9to5mac.com. Interesting to note that there was nothing on the O2 site about the increasing problem of spam.

On our home phone we are finding more and more harassing phone calls too.... sign of the times, apparently.