Combating telephone spam. Call centres must introduce themselves before speaking

How many rings signal the end of Western civilisation? Three, perhaps four: the time it takes for a thumb to slide across the tempered glass of yet another iPhone, ready to remind us that the electricity market is free – utterly free – so much so that it calls us at all hours of the day. We had braced ourselves for the horsemen of the Apocalypse, but instead a recorded message has arrived, urging us – with almost mystical urgency – to switch to a new gas or electricity tariff.

From this week, at least for those who have updated their iPhone, there’s a small new feature. It’s not that big a deal – it’s been around for longer in the Android world – but with iOS 27.2, Apple has also introduced ‘Ask why they’re calling’ in Italian, the feature that allows the phone to answer on our behalf when an unknown number is calling, or rather, one not in our contacts. The phone asks why they’re calling, and the caller must identify themselves: their response appears on the screen, and only then does the owner decide whether to accept the call. It’s a sort of digital doorman, with a question that might well have a future in Italy: “Excuse me, who are you and what do you want?”

The feature was unveiled in June 2025 with iOS 26 and rolled out to US iPhones in September of the same year. For Italian users, however, it took over a year to arrive. But the delay does not make the idea any less interesting. A word of caution, though: the iPhone does not automatically recognise a call centre, does not verify the caller’s identity, and does not distinguish between a sales call and one from a doctor wishing to reschedule an appointment. It records what the caller says and presents this to the person making the decision. If there is a real-life operator on the other end, they will have to explain who they are. If it is an automated system, it will at least have to try to get past the question. It is not a spam blocker, but an interactive filter. And that alone, for someone who receives twenty calls a day, is no small thing.

In the United States, where Call Screening has been available since September 2025, the initial figures do not suggest a collapse of call centres. An analysis published by Nooks, a company specialising in telemarketing tools, examined over a thousand customers and millions of calls made in the first two weeks following the launch. Only 2.5 per cent of calls were answered by a voice assistant: the connection rate fell by just 0.1 percentage points, a variation deemed by the company to be within normal statistical fluctuation. This sample concerns sales operators, not the entire population of American users, but it is sufficient to dampen predictions of telemarketing’s demise. The problem, after all, has not disappeared across the Atlantic. In 2025, the Federal Trade Commission received over 2.6 million complaints about unwanted calls.

In Italy, unscrupulous call centres have already learnt to change their numbers, area codes and cover their tracks. The Do Not Call Register has become a necessary step for anyone who does not want to be disturbed, but it has not eliminated the problem – partly because those who were operating illegally have simply remained in the same place.

Meanwhile, AGCOM has introduced an anti-spoofing filter, which operates upstream of the network and blocks calls from abroad that use counterfeit or non-compliant Italian numbers. The results are significant: in the first eight months of 2026, the filter blocked around 191 million calls – 7.2 per cent of the total under consideration – averaging 790,000 per day. Calls from abroad using a counterfeit Italian mobile number have fallen by 95% compared with the period prior to the extension of the block to mobile numbers. However, the AGCOM filter targets a specific technique, not every commercial call. Calls generated within Italy and those that do not fall into the blocked categories remain unaffected.

This is where Apple’s little ‘questioning’ comes into play. The two tools are not interchangeable: one operates on the network and prevents some of the fraudulent traffic from reaching the recipient; the other acts on the device and asks those who have managed to get through to explain their intentions. The interactive filter does not promise to shut down call centres, but it puts the public in a position to choose before answering. It is one of the most effective defences currently available to individuals precisely because it does not rely solely on a list of suspicious numbers: it forces the caller to identify themselves.

It remains to be seen how the nation’s ingenuity will respond. The shrewdest agencies will adapt, whilst others may continue to put recorded messages online that cannot answer the question. Some will try to present themselves as ‘customer service’, others as an old friend. For once, however, it won’t be the member of the public who answers first. It will be the call centre’s turn.