Google Voice and Blocking Unknown Callers

February 12, 2010 10 comments

In the last few days I have had a few calls to my Google Voice phone number where the caller lets it ring, once or twice, and then hangs up. The calls are coming from an “Unknown” caller but that is why I went with Google Voice as my primary number, call blocking and call history.

I logged in to my Google Voice site and sure enough, there are the inbound calls from “Unknown” with the option to either report them as spam or to block them. Reporting them as spam isn’t really what I want to do as that still rings the phone and just doesn’t allow for voice-mails to be left, I wanted to block them altogether. I have some concerns about blocking the “unknown” as Google Voice seems to know who is actually calling as you can see when choosing to block them they ask “Are you sure you want to block Unknown.95f990ac7cec66623daab9a6f37dd5fdea948088?”. The GUID there implies to me that Google knows the originating phone and should be able to block this one number, and only the one number, but is this actually what happens?

I went looking through Google’s help site and various other online sites and I could not find a solid answer. I am also wondering what happens if this caller starts unblocking their phone number, will the block still apply or will they still be blocked? I also could not find if this truly will only block this one Unknown caller known to me by the GUID or if it will block one or more “Unknown” callers.

Does anyone actually know the answers to these questions? I sent off an email to the Google Support team using the form within the Google Support pages but I don’t expect to hear back any time soon.

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#1 | Written by carlos about 3 years ago. Reply

I have a similar situation as yours and the same questions. I have blocked my unknown caller and they disappeared from my call records. Google says it should still appear in the call logs, but it doesn’t.

Would love to know if you’ve had any other developments on this.
#2 | Written by David Remy about 3 years ago. Reply

I too have seen the same reaction from Google Voice that you noticed. The day that I blocked the unknown caller they either stopped calling or Google Voice stopped logging the calls in all ways I can tell. I am guessing they didn’t stop calling but I can’t see any evidence that they did call so who knows.
#3 | Written by Al about 3 years ago. Reply

Why don’t you try it? Get a second phone and block the caller ID with *67. Once you’ve blocked the unknown number in GV, try calling without using *67 from the second phone and see what happens.
#4 | Written by Jeff about 2 years ago. Reply

I noticed this issue too. I only want to block people who are intentionally blocking their caller id by using *67 or any other similar method but there does not seem to be a way at the moment. I experimented with this by using my wife’s cell phone as follows, dialed my google voice number with *67 as the prefix and got the call from “unknown” followed by a period and a bunch of random characters (GUID) showing in my call history. I blocked the “unknown” number followed by the GUID, then I called my google voice number again using the *67 prefix, I got the “not in service” blocked message from google. I later called my google voice number again from her same phone WITHOUT pressing *67 and I got the “not in service” blocked message from google again. I then reviewed the call history and found the word “Blocked” appeared next to her name in red letters. I then was able to unblock her number by clicking on “more” and then “unblock”. So, it seems that google does actually have a way of knowing who is calling even if the caller presses *67. It would be nice if someone figured out how to decrypt google’s GUID process so that you could figure out who is calling you. Also, it seems that if you block an unknown caller with their unique GUID, and they later call you again without using *67 you can unblock them and discover who the original unknown caller was.
#5 | Written by creativeboulder about 2 years ago. Reply

Jeff, That would be a great task. For somebody to decode that GUID that Google Voice creates for Unknown.* callers. I have a contact (for my GVoice and Android) called ‘Blocked Callers’. I have a ton of spammers I’ve collected over the years, etc. I added in a ‘Other Phone’ value, blocked.*, and added a test number (private home business line) just to test with no luck.

Frustrating. You would think with how great the Google Voice service is, that they would have that base covered. I started out years ago as a Grand Central user before Google bought them out and re-branded the service. I believe Grand Central had a “Don’t Allow Blocked Callers” option at some point.

Come on Google.
#6 | Written by Eddie about 2 years ago. Reply

You don’t have to decode GUID to get the number.. Just go to your missed calls tab, click more under the unknown caller then email it to yourself with link checked. In your email, it will disclose the number behind “unknown”
#7 | Written by ron about 2 years ago. Reply

only works on unknown voicemail sometimes,
the self email link check, on mised tabs doesnt have the option to email?
#8 | Written by Andrew Bement about 2 years ago. Reply

Check out this post on Google’s forums, it’s the best solution I’ve found thus far:

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/voice/thread?tid=2f847c4448c1ad4e&hl=en
#9 | Written by Jack about 2 years ago. Reply

#8 does not work… looking for alternatives; can’t believe that google is so callous, and would not include a basic feature.
#10 | Written by Brittany about 7 months ago. Reply

You can find these missed calls in your spam. After you block the number even if they unblock the number they are still blocked and thus end up in the “spam” portion of your google voice.

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Google Voice and Blocking Unknown Callers

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