Jul 13, 2011 17:15 GMT  ·  By

Google has introduced an automatic anti-spam filter for Google Voice in order to protect users from unsolicited calls and SMS messages.

Up until now, users who were bothered by telemarketers or other callers had the option of reporting their numbers as spam.

However, the new system works automatically and relies on the spam intelligence the company gathered so far as well as its specially designed algorithms.

"Thanks to the help of the thousands of Google Voice users who mark calls as spam everyday—and our own spam identification tools—it is now possible to automatically redirect calls, texts, and voicemails from any of the numbers in our database directly into your spam folder," the Google Voice engineering teams says.

The feature can be enabled from the Calls tab and numbers incorrectly flagged as spam can be unblocked by simply hitting the "not spam" button in the spam folder.

The company encourages users to continue marking spam numbers missed by the system and to unblock the ones that are wrongfully flagged. In the long run this will help improve the system's accuracy even more.

Voice and SMS spam is a growing concern. According to field tests performed by GSMA, around 70% of SMS spam is related to financial fraud.

The problem is so bad that some countries have restricted the number of text messages users can send in a single day. Back in February the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) ordered all mobile operators to limit the maximum number of daily SMS messages to 100.

Meanwhile, phone call scams are also increasing, particularly those where scammers pose as technical support engineers for known software companies. Their goal is to trick people into thinking their computers have a problem and to convince them to install malicious programs.

Another type of phone call attack known as voice phishing, or vishing for short, involves fraudsters posing as bank employees in order to extract financial information from users.