Quick answer
To cut down on scam texts on iPhone: turn on Filter Unknown Senders in Messages settings, report and block individual numbers as they arrive, never tap a link in an unexpected delivery or bank text, and add protection that blocks the malicious link itself if you do tap it — since filtering senders doesn't stop a link from working once you click it.
Start with the built-in settings
Go to Settings > Messages and turn on "Filter Unknown Senders." This sorts texts from numbers not in your contacts into a separate tab, so they don't interrupt you and don't show previews on your lock screen. It's not perfect — scammers spoof numbers constantly — but it's a free first step.
Report and block as they come in
When a scam text arrives, use the "Report Junk" link Apple shows under the message, then block the number. This doesn't stop the next number they switch to, but it does feed Apple's spam detection and removes that sender going forward.
The part filtering doesn't cover
Here's the gap: sender filtering decides whether a text shows up in your main inbox. It does nothing about what happens if you tap the link inside the text. A scam text pretending to be a delivery notice, a bank alert, or a prize claim often has a working link that leads to a fake login page built to steal your password or payment info the moment you enter it. And this isn't an iPhone-only problem — the same kind of link shows up in texts and messaging apps on Android too, where Apple's own Messages filtering doesn't apply at all.
What actually stops the link
That's a different layer: blocking the connection to the malicious domain itself, regardless of which app or message opened it. Casper's Cloak runs a machine-learning classifier on network connections to flag phishing domains, including ones that haven't shown up on a blocklist yet, and works the same way across iPhone, Android, and Mac under one subscription — instead of a filter that only covers the Messages app on one platform.
One thing worth knowing: Casper also lets you choose specific apps, domains, or IP ranges to route outside its protected tunnel for convenience (for banking apps, streaming, etc.). Any domain you've chosen to exclude that way loses this layer of protection along with the rest, so it's worth leaving that list short and deliberate rather than broad.
For parents specifically
If you're setting this up for a kid's phone, the message-filtering settings above are worth turning on as a baseline. Kids often don't have the context yet to recognize a fake delivery notice or a prize-claim text for what it is, so the extra layer matters even more on their phones. Pairing sender filtering with network-level phishing protection covers both halves of the problem: fewer scam texts reaching the inbox, and the links inside the ones that get through not working even if tapped.
See current plans at casperscloak.com/subscriptions.