Spam calls and phone scams are a growing problem around the world, and companies have been working on ways to protect customers from ill-intentioned callers. Now, T-Mobile has become the first carrier in the United States to introduce Caller Verified, a feature based on the STIR (Secure Telephony Identity Revisited) and SHAKEN (Secure Handling of Asserted information using toKENs) standards recommended by the FCC.
STIR and SHAKEN are a pair of standards that allow carriers and service providers to verify the authenticity of a caller. This ensures that when you receive a call, you can know right away if the number that's calling you is legitimate, which in T-Mobile's case is done through the "Caller Verified" indicator.
The Un-carrier had already announced it was ready to implement the standards back in November, and now the feature has begun rolling out to Galaxy Note9 users. To use the feature, you'll simply need to have your phone on the latest software available, and T-Mobile will do the rest for you. Support for more phones is promised for later in the year.
According to a study cited by T-Mobile, nearly 50% of calls in the United States in 2019 will be spam, so this sort of verification will undoubtedly be welcome to many users in the country. It remains to be seen if and when other carriers join the Un-carrier in providing this additional protection.
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