If you’ve recently used your iPhone, you may have noticed that some calls show up in your call log with a check mark next to them. This is important to know, as it indicates that the call has been verified by your carrier and not a spam caller or spoofed number.
Caller ID
The check mark on the iphone call log means something different for each phone. It could indicate that the call was a completed one, but it can also mean that the call was missed or unanswered.
Regardless of what it means, it’s a useful feature that can help you know if someone is calling from a legitimate number or if they are trying to scam you. It can also prevent you from allowing calls that could be spam to make it through to your device and cause you to miss important messages.
Apple started displaying these checkmarks in iOS 13 last year to help customers avoid spoofed numbers and other potential nuisances. They’re based on the STIR/SHAKEN standard, which is designed to help carriers verify that calls are legitimate and not malicious.
After a call is made, the network runs a verification service to determine if it’s legit and hasn’t been spoofed. That’s where a green checkmark shows up on the phone or other devices.
Once the call is verified, it’s passed to a CVT. The CVT then performs the same TN validation that the network did and passes that information to an app on the user’s device, which then displays a green checkmark.
This is done on all phones that support the SHAKEN and STIR standards, which are mandated by the Federal Communications Commission in the US. Carriers must implement these standards by June 30, 2021.
These checks are a key piece of a much larger process that involves a number of things. It starts at the network level and ends at the end of the call, depending on how your carrier handles it.
Typically, that’s just the name of the person that called and the number they used to call, but in some cases, the carrier will layer logos and other rich data on top as well. Those data can be pulled from internal data sources or third-party sources.
This layer of data is what’s behind the green checkmark on Apple devices and on Android devices, too. It’s also the same layer that influences how call answers are displayed on mobile devices.
Carrier-verified calls
The check mark you see on the iphone call log means that a phone call has been verified by your carrier, as per STIR/SHAKEN standards. This is an effort by carriers to block robocalls and other spam calls from their network, which consume valuable resources and can cause a lot of hassle for the receiving network.
This type of verification is based on the CNAM record that you have set up with your service provider. When a new phone call comes in, the receiving network will pull that CNAM from Neustar and display it in the Caller ID screen.
These verified calls will be marked with a green tick to show that the call was verified. These verified calls are usually safe to answer and should not result in any malicious activity.
Unfortunately, not all carriers have this feature. Nevertheless, it will be helpful for consumers to be able to tell whether or not the call they have received is a legitimate one.
If you have a recent phone call that has been verified, you will be able to see the check mark next to the call in your recents list and if you are a contact, you will also be able to tell from the date and time when the phone call was received. The fact that Apple doesn’t present this information for incoming calls is odd.
However, if you have received a phone call that was not verified, you may still be able to determine that the call was not spam by checking your phone’s call log. If you have an Android phone, you can check this through the Phone app and if you have a Pixel device, Google’s Call Screen feature will help.
While these verifications are a good start, it is unlikely that they will be effective in cutting down on robocalls. This is because of a number of factors.
Caller-verified calls with a green tick
When you’re talking on the phone, you may sometimes need to jot down a quick note about what was said. Thankfully, Apple is making it easy for you to do just that with the call log feature in its iPhone app.
A green check mark next to a number indicates that it has been verified by a third-party service. It’s a new feature that will appear in iOS 13 and aims to reduce the amount of spoofed calls you receive.
Spoofed calls are when a scammer uses your phone’s caller ID to fool you into thinking that you’re speaking with a known or trusted person. This can be very annoying and a pain for a lot of people.
To verify a caller, phone networks will look at the information in their databases to see whether or not the number you’re calling matches up with the name and address shown on your caller ID. This will help them decide if to mark the call as verified, or to show you a possible scam message, or to block it altogether.
As a result, spam calls can cause huge headaches for phone networks. They consume network resources and don’t pay a phone carrier for the calls they make, which means those carriers have to spend time and money on weeding out these calls before they reach their customers.
So, to cut down on spoofed calls and to give people a better way to verify callers, AT&T has rolled out call verification features to Android phones that use its digital home phone service. You’ll now see a green tick on validated calls, which AT&T says will help you determine if the caller is spoofed or a real person.
You can also download a spreadsheet with all of your call data. This can be very helpful if you want to analyze your call history in detail, or if you’re looking to find out which calls you haven’t answered recently.
The data will look exactly the same for each call, but it will show an icon of a phone (green, gray-black, or orange-red). Each icon will have an arrow going toward or away from it, which corresponds to whether the call was inbound or outbound.
Caller-verified calls with a red tick
When a caller has been verified by your phone carrier, a check mark will appear on the iphone call log, along with a notification that says “Calls With A Checkmark Have Been Verified By The Carrier.” This means that the person who called you is a recognized and authorized number that has been verified by your phone carrier. This means that they are not a spam caller or someone who may be up to no good.
This is a feature that is available on some phones from certain carriers, including T-Mobile and Verizon. The feature works with calls made over the wireless network or cellular data connection (VoLTE).
It is a security feature that will help to prevent incoming calls from potentially malicious callers. It will also ensure that you don’t miss important calls from people you know and trust.
These checks are part of a system that is designed to fight illegal caller ID spoofing, where scammers and other abusers take over an existing phone number for short periods of time. The system is called STIR and SHAKEN, and it’s based on cryptographic methods to track a number from its origination all the way to your device.
While this is a great start, it’s not enough to stop robocalls and other abusers from using this method of spoofing. Until the mobile carriers and other telecommunications firms make this verification process more effective, consumers will continue to fall prey to these abusers.
This is why cellular networks have been fighting illegal spoofing with technologies like STIR and SHAKEN. These mandates are meant to ensure that a call is legitimate, but the fact of the matter is that there are too many things wrong with this process to get it right.
Apple finally introduced support for STIR/SHAKEN with iOS 13, which was supposed to help a lot of devices. But the reality is that it’s actually useless when it comes to detecting incoming robocalls, and a lot of people are still confused about what this feature even means. It’s a big shame that so many consumers aren’t aware of this feature and its potential to prevent incoming calls from being spoofed.
