Google has now started rolling out a new feature dubbed Verified Calls to its Phone application. The new feature verifies the identity of the business when they call you. That’s not the interesting part. What’s interesting is the fact that it can also tell you why a particular business is calling you. This means that you can see the reason before picking a call from the business.
The feature can help the user make an informed decision of whether to pick the call or not. Even though it sounds quite interesting, there is a catch though which we will be talking about further down the road.
Google Phone’s Verified Calls feature explained!
The Verified Calls feature doesn’t just randomly work. Before calling you, the participant business will be required to send some details to the server. We’re talking about details such as business phone number, your phone number along with the reason for calling. With all these details collected in the Verified Calls server, Google can easily fetch the information when required and show the result to users on the Phone app.
So, when the business calls you, the Phone app will compare the incoming call information with the data that Google already has. If the comparison results true, the Google Phone app displays the call as a Verified Call. Furthermore, it also displays the reason for calling which the business earlier provided. Everything looks and works fine so far.
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What’s the catch?
The entire infrastructure of Google Phone’s Verified Calls depends on the fact that a business is providing all this information to the server. If a business decides to not participate in this, then the user will also not receive any reason behind the call. Furthermore, you will need to add your phone number to your Google account in order to use this feature. If you’re hesitant to do that, then this feature is not for you.
Lastly, the Google Phone app doesn’t work with most Android smartphones out there. Only the Pixel users along with few compatible device users can actually enjoy this newly added feature. To find whether your device is compatible or not, you can head over to our guide. Coming to its availability, the feature will be turned on by default on compatible devices. If you wish, you can go ahead and choose to turn it off.
Although the feature sounds pretty cool, many businesses might not participate in this especially those who want the user to pick the call anyway. These include phishing calls, spam calls along with telemarketing ones.
