Sometimes your contact information ends up where you don’t want it, and you end up with annoying spam iMessages from people, companies, or bots that try to scam you or steal personal information.

Fortunately, Apple’s iMessage service comes with an abuse report feature that you can use to report senders who are misusing the iMessage platform by making it a less enjoyable thing to use.

It can be a huge security risk to answer back or tap on any links from unknown senders. You may be walking into a type of phishing trap. For this reason, it’s better to report the abuse of Apple’s iMessage platform and then delete the message, so it goes away.

Moreover, if you have fallen victim to spammy iMessages from individuals, companies, or bots, they can be annoying. The notifications will still sound off your iPhone, other iOS devices, and Macs at all times during the day and night and thus interrupt your life.

By reporting a spammy iMessage, Apple gets a snapshot of who was messaging you and what they’re saying. It can then be analyzed and Apple can take action if it’s a legitimate spam message by suspending the iMessage account of the user. Additionally, you can even block the user yourself.

In iOS 8.3 and later, any time someone who isn’t in your Contacts list iMessages you, you will see a blue Report Junk button under a prompt that says “This sender is not in your contact list,” as shown below.

When you tap on this button, a prompt appears at the bottom of the screen that lets you either delete the iMessage and report it to Apple as a junk message, or cancel your report if you’ve changed your mind for any reason.

If you are using an iOS device running firmware earlier than iOS 8.3, you can report a spammy iMessage by emailing Apple with the following information:

• A screenshot that shows the iMessage contents
• The email address or phone number of the sender
• The date and time that the message was received

If you suspect the iMessage is spammy, the best thing to do is report it to Apple. Not only does this prevent the same sender from continuing to harass you, but it prevents other unwary people from being attacked by the same person with stupid, pointless, annoying messages (aka S.P.A.M.).

After reporting the spam message, you will have given Apple all the information they need, to choose whether to take action against the sender.

You can block the sender if you want to, and that’ll keep you from getting any other messages from that person, company, or bot, but only by reporting it can you help make iMessage a better place to message for everyone.

When you report a message as junk, the message will be permanently deleted from your device. Once deleted, you cannot undo it. And the Messages app will forward the sender’s information and the message in question to Apple.

But that’s about all it does. Reporting a message as junk doesn’t block the contact or prevent them from messaging you in the future. So if you don’t want to receive any messages from them in the future, you’ll also have to block them.

How to Filter Junk Messages on iPhone

If you would like to know how to filter junk messages on your iPhone, follow the steps below to do so.

• On your iPhone, first, you need to add a spam filter to your Messages application to prepare to filter junk text messages on your iPhone.
• Then, click on the Settings app from the home screen and then hit on the “Messages” tab to turn on the feature of “Filter Unknown Senders”.

Thus, you will see two categories in your Messages application: Contacts & SMS and Unknown Senders. All text messages that are sent from people who are not on your contact list will be categorized in the “Unknown Senders” column.

You can check all the filtered text messages by clicking on the tab of “Unknown Senders”. Thus, you can block a contact number to address how to stop junk messages on your iPhone, add a number to your contacts, or click on the button “Report Junk” under the SMS to remove it directly from iPhone.

Report Spam Text

Once you have message filtering on, when you receive a text from someone who isn’t in your contact list, Apple gives you the opportunity to report it by tapping Report Junk underneath the message. This could just be a text from a new friend or coworker that you haven’t added to your Contacts yet. But if it seems like an ad or fishy in any way, be sure not to tap on any links in the body of the message; just report it, then block the number. Here’s how:

• Go to Messages and find the spam message you’d like to report.
• Open the message and tap Report Junk underneath it.
• Tap Delete and Report Junk. After you’ve done this, the content and sender’s information will be sent to Apple.

iPhone uses trend analysis, dynamic lists, and other technology to automatically detect and block junk mail and messages before it reaches your inbox. In addition, we can manually block some contacts that are unsolicited and unwanted and report junk messages on iPhone.

To access and view junk messages on iPhone.

• Go to iPhone Settings
• Click on Messages
• Scroll down and find Junk under the MESSAGE FILTERING tab.

Then tap Junk, you will find all junk messages.

If you have reported the other person as spam on the device, I would recommend checking to see if the contact is blocked. If so, click unblocked, and you would be good to go. I would recommend looking into our Device Support Tool on how to block or unblock contacts.

If your message was delivered as junk

If you’re trying to send a message to someone, and you see an alert that says the message was delivered as junk, here are some things you can try:

• Ask the person that you’re trying to message to add your phone number to their Contacts.
• Ask the person that you’re trying to message to send you a message to start the conversation.
• On your device, go to Settings > Messages > Send & Receive and make sure that only your phone number is selected under Start New Conversations From. If your Apple ID is selected, the messages will be delivered as junk.

• If you’re on an iPad or iPod touch, turn on Text Message Forwarding from your iPhone.

To find messages reported as junk:

Conclusion

Reporting junk won’t actually be effective unless the spam account gets reported by a lot of people. A spam report sends the content of the message to be checked if it’s really spam. There’s even an iMessage email you can send to report spam.

Keep in mind that this only works for iMessage, or messages that appear in blue chat bubbles instead of green ones. If you get a spammy iMessage, you should always report it to Apple, so they can handle it on their end. After all, Apple doesn’t want people abusing iMessage any more than you do.

If someone reported you as junk as a joke or accidentally, a single report won’t hurt your account. If you’re not actually spamming people, one report won’t hurt your future communications or the actually reported account. It will definitely take multiple reports for an action to be taken against your account.