The report junk feature on your iPhone allows you to keep your messages neat and clean. However, with the new prominent placement of the “Delete & Report Junk” button that appears under messages, a lot of users end up accidentally reporting text as junk.
There’s no way to undo it, but it must be a relief for you to hear that once you report and delete a text, Apple or your carrier won’t straightway block messages from that number. However, there are chances that multiple blocks from different people can lead to blocking.
Below, I’ll tell you what happens when you report a message as junk by mistake. I’ll also take a look at how to check those messages and how to recover them in case you have accidentally marked them.
What Happens When You Accidentally Report a Text As Junk?
It triggers several behind-the-scenes actions. These are:
- The message is immediately deleted from your conversation history and moved to the ‘Recently Deleted’ folder. After 30 days, it’s permanently deleted.
- Your iPhone sends a report to your cellular carrier and Apple stating that the message was marked as spam. This includes details like the phone number, message contents, timestamp, etc.
- Your carrier may use this report to monitor that number for spamming behaviors if they receive multiple junk reports. However, they won’t block the sender after just one accidental report.
- Apple uses junk reports to improve its spam detection algorithms. A single wrong report likely won’t affect the sender’s status.
- There is no official way to notify your carrier or Apple that the junk reporting was a mistake. The message can be recovered from ‘Recently Deleted’, but the report still stands.
So in summary, while one wrong junk report shouldn’t get the sender blocked, it does go on record with your carrier and Apple.
Many iPhone users want more controls around junk reporting to avoid these accidental reports being submitted without their consent.
How To Undo Reported Junk Messages?
It is worth noting that accidentally reporting someone’s text as junk will not prevent them from texting or contacting you. There are no accessible steps just yet to undo the marking of a text message as junk. But the best thing you can do is to keep replying and being in contact with the sender.
This tells the service provider and the manufacturer that it was mistakenly reported. You can always access the deleted or junked message from the deleted folder or the junk folder. You can also recover them.
How To Check Junk Messages on iPhone?
You can access all the deleted and junked messages on your phone whether or not you did it purposefully. Follow these steps to read and retrieve the deleted or junked conversations.
- Open the Messages app. It will open your inbox by default action.
- Press the “Filters” tab on the top left of the inbox. This will take you to different folders of messages.
- Locate the folders “Junk” and “Recently Deleted” at the bottom of the list of folders in the Filters.
- Select the messages you want back and tap on “Recover”.
- Now, go back to “All Messages” and locate the message you recovered. Note that you may have to scroll down till the original date when that message was sent.
Can You Disable the Report Junk Feature?
Fortunately, with iOS 16.1 and above, there is a setting that allows you to see “Report Junk” and “Delete” as two separate options. Unfortunately, there is no way to disable the “Report Junk” option altogether.
To make sure that you do not repeat the same mistake, keep a habit of deleting a message from the inbox with the swipe gesture. If there are multiple messages, select them at once and then delete them.
If you keep this habit of deleting a message with the swipe gesture, chances are that you won’t even encounter this error or call to action inside the text.
Frequently Asked Questions
By pressing “Report Junk”, you are telling the service provider and the phone manufacturer that the message is either unwanted or spam. This report along with the whole thread of messages and the log reports, are sent to both service providers and phone manufacturers to help them block the spam senders.
No, reporting junk does not notify the sender. However, if there are multiple reports of junk for a particular sender, then they may receive a cautionary piece of communication from the carrier or phone manufacturer.
For unwanted promotional messages, it is better to report junk because sometimes the senders use the same source to send important information like OTPs. If it is an individual number which you no longer wish to receive texts from, it is better to block the sender.
Wrap Up!
So there you go. With a bit of safety comes a bit of inconvenience as well. The best way is to develop habits that suit the phone’s settings. Use the swipe gestures to delete the messages, for instance.
Also, weighing the benefits and drawbacks of the “Report Junk” feature, it does not make sense to completely turn the feature off though.
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