Do you get marketing calls on your iPhone? Do callers pester you with offers of products and services you don’t want? Why not block them so they can’t call again? Here is a step-by-step guide.

Once your phone number becomes known to marketers you can become the victim of many calls from companies you don’t want to deal with selling products you are not interested in.

Some calls are scams and the people responsible are out to make money from you. You could end up losing a lot of cash if you are not careful. Sometimes scammers will call and then hang up as soon as you answer, of they let the phone ring once and then hang up. It's annoying when you get a call and there is no-one on the other end.

You might see missed calls on your phone when you pick it up or you might choose to ignore unknown and unrecognized numbers.

Sometimes scammers and marketers ring and then deliberately hang up to confuse you and make you wonder who called. Was it a friend or was the call important? The scammers hope you will call back and then they may charge you by the minute to talk to some sales person about something that is of no interest to you.

Fortunately, you can block unwanted junk calls, people who hang up after one ring, and companies you would rather not deal with.

1 View call notifications

Pull down from the top of the screen on the iPhone to see notifications and you might see a missed call or two. Calls from contacts show their name and they are fine. You should look out for calls where the number was unknown and for which you have no contact information.

2 View all calls and missed calls

Press Phone and select Recents at the bottom of the screen and then select either the All or Missed tab. Check both. Unsolicited sales calls and scammers will call from an unknown number, and whether it was accepted or missed, it is obvious in the list by the lack of a contact name. Press the i button on the right to see more information.

3 Copy the number

The information screen is an important one and there is an option to block the number down at the bottom, which we will see in a minute. Of course, not all unknown callers are troublemakers. What if the number is simply from a friend with a new phone, a legitimate company, someone you deal with who isn’t in your contacts? Best check that phone number. Long press on it and then press Copy when it appears.

4 Search with Safari

Go to the home screen and then press Safari to open a browser window. Long press in the search box and then press Paste to paste in the number. You can paste and search in one go.

5 See the search results

I used DuckDuckGo for this, but Google or Bing can be used. All of them are good at recognizing phone numbers. Here in the UK, and most likely in the US too, it produces several good links to websites that either have phone directories or lists of scammers and junk callers. Tapping a link took me to a site that gave the phone number an overall negative rating. There were dozens of comments that could be read and the overall opinion was that the number is from a junk caller who has been pestering many more people.

Searching the number in your own local DuckDuckGo or Google search will no doubt produce similar results. search engines are pretty good at recognizing phone numbers and showing links to sites that can tell you who they belong to.

6 Block the number

Back at the information screen (step 3), scroll down to the bottom and then press Block this Caller. You are asked to confirm that you want to block them, then won’t hear from this phone number again.

7 View and edit blocked numbers

The iPhone adds the number to a Blocked Contacts list and you can see it by going to Settings > Phone > Blocked Contacts. You can remove numbers from the blocked list by swiping left over them and then tapping the red Unblock button that is revealed. You can also press the Edit button at the top and quickly remove numbers from the blocked list/

Don’t suffer phone pests, sales calls and scams. Block the numbers on your iPhone for a quieter more peaceful life.