14 DAY TRIAL // Google Voice, the service that enables users to get a number from Google to use on their phones and voice mail, has just got better.
It already offered features such as call history, conference calling, voice transcription to text, and more, but Google decided it was high time to enhance it to provide users with better management capabilities over their privacy.
Accessible through a web interface, Google Voice now enables users to create a new group of callers, in which to include all anonymous and unknown calls.
Basically, the new setting is meant to offer increased control over calls received from people that are not in user’s address book.
“For anonymous callers: these are callers who do not have a caller ID. They sometimes appear as unknown, or restricted, depending on why the caller’s number is not shown. You can use this group to for example screen any call without a caller ID,” Tom Ford, software engineer, Google, explains.
Through setting up this group, users would have the Google Voice system screening all unknown calls and prompt the callers to identify themselves. When the phone rings, one would be able to answer the call, or send it to voicemail.
In addition to this group of callers, there will also be numbers included in user’s address book, all put together in a section that further enables a variety of customizations.
“People in your address book: this allows you to customize the experience of all contacts in your address book. This also works by exclusion. For example, you can set a special greeting just for people in your address book, or screen anyone not in your address book,” Tom Ford notes.
Both these groups are specific to Google Voice, he continues. Users who would like to manage them would have to head over to the group tab for that.