Big SMS Update For Indian Android Users: Google’s Verified SMS, Spam Protection Is Now Live!

SMS or Short Message Service is crucial and necessary. Even if you are chatting on Whatsapp and sharing images on Facebook Messenger, Instagram, but the good ol’ is the place where you get marketing messages, and OTPs from banks.

However, as experienced by most of the users, 90% of SMSes are actually spam, and coming from unknown sources.

Google, who owns Android OS, is now determined the make SMSes safer, and spam free

This is the reason that Google has now rolled out verified SMS and spam protection service for India, and 8 other nations.

How will it work?

Google’s Verified SMS Service

From now on, Android users will get SMS with a verified tag on it. This will alert the users that SMSes are indeed coming from a verified source, and can be trusted.

Businesses will need to contact Google, and get the verified tag after submitting and sharing the required documents.

Besides India, this new verified SMS service has been launched in US, Mexico, Brazil, the UK, France, Philippines, Spain and Canada.

And to start with, only 5 businesses have been given this verified SMS tag: 1-800-Flowers, Banco Bradesco, Kayak, Payback and SoFi.

However, as more and more businesses get this verified SMS tag, users will be able to checkout the authenticity and genuineness of the SMS, and take intelligent decisions.

SMS Spam Protection from Google

SMS Spam is a big problem for not only Indian Android users, but also users from other countries.

To stop spamming via SMS, Google has rolled out SMS Spam Protection.

From now on, any spammy SMS which comes to the inbox of Android user will have a warning attached, and users will get two options: Report Spam, Report Not Spam.

This warning will come along only those SMS which Google determines as Spam, and based on the tags which Android users will apply on these SMSes, via reporting.

In 2017, Google already introduced the next generation of SMS: RCS or Android SMS which empowers users to share images and graphics with the SMS.

We will keep you updated, as more details come in.