Screen and block spam callers

Set screening thresholds, keep block and trusted lists, and choose what happens to a flagged caller before the call reaches your team.

Screening scores every inbound call from an outside number before the call is delivered, using your own block and trusted lists, vendor data, and the shared screening network. A score above your flag threshold marks the caller for review; a score above your enforcement threshold can divert the call entirely. Screening sits between the schedule and the destination — the phone system works out where the call would go, then screening decides whether it goes there.

Where screening fits a call

The schedule picks the time period and the period’s action names a destination.
Screening scores the caller once, on first contact. Later legs of the same call — a menu digit, a no-answer hand-off, a transfer — are not rescored.
What happens next depends on the score and the screening mode:
- Below the flag threshold, nothing changes and the call goes to its destination.
- At or above the flag threshold, the caller is flagged. The call still connects, and desk phones show Potential Spam in place of the caller’s name.
- At or above the enforcement threshold, and only while screening is enforcing, your override action replaces the destination.
A caller who clears screening — or who passes your screening menu — follows your normal routing from that point on.

Screening never fails a call closed. If a score cannot be produced, the call routes normally.

Prerequisites

Screening enabled for the phone system. If it is not, the page reads “Spam screening isn’t enabled for this phone system yet. Contact us to turn it on.”
A role that can change settings. Without it the page is read-only: the Save and Reset buttons and the list controls are hidden.

Read the screening mode

Open Settings > Spam Screening. The banner at the top of the page reports one of two modes:

Observing — screening runs in the background and records what it would catch, but no caller is diverted.
Enforcing — callers at or above your enforcement threshold are acted on by your override setting.

The mode is managed by Steer Phones, so the banner is a report and not a control. Contact Steer Phones to turn enforcement on or off. Everything else on the page is yours to change, and it is worth tuning your thresholds and override while still in observing mode so enforcement starts from settings you have already watched.

Set the screening settings

Under Screening settings:

Setting	What it does	Range and default
Participate in the screening network	Contributes and receives anonymized number reputation across participating Steer Phones systems	On by default
Flag threshold	Risk score at or above which a caller is flagged for review	0–100, default 40
Enforcement threshold	Risk score at or above which the override action applies while enforcing	0–100, default 70
Override action	What happens to a caller over the enforcement threshold	None by default

Keep the enforcement threshold at or above the flag threshold. Callers scoring between the two are flagged but still connect; only callers above the enforcement line are acted on. Nothing stops you saving the two the other way around, so check the numbers rather than relying on the form.

Turning Participate in the screening network off limits screening to your own lists and vendor data. Only an anonymized number reputation is exchanged either way — no caller details and no call content leave your account.

The override action offers three choices plus None (no override configured):

Hang up on the caller — the caller hears that calls from their number are blocked by this business.
Send to voicemail — the caller records to the company mailbox.
Send to a call menu — the caller must make a keypad choice before reaching anyone.

With None, a caller over the enforcement threshold is still connected — flagged in your analytics and call log, but not diverted. Select Save to apply changes, or Reset to discard them.

If Steer Phones has configured a custom override route for you, a note above the picker says so. Choosing an option here replaces it.

A screening menu is the gentlest override: a legitimate caller presses a key and gets through, while an autodialer that never presses anything is dropped.

Set the override action to Send to a call menu.
In the Call menu picker, choose Create a screening menu.
Wait for “Creating screening menu…” to finish, then select Save.

The one-click option creates a call menu named Spam Screening that plays a short “to reach us, press 1” prompt once and hangs up if nothing is pressed. It is an ordinary call menu, so it appears on your Call Menus page and you can re-record its greeting or change its buttons like any other. The picker shows it as Dedicated screening menu once it exists, and creating it again returns the same menu rather than a duplicate.

A flagged caller who connects through a call menu earns rolling trust and rings straight through for the next 30 days. Any call menu you use as the override earns that trust, not only the dedicated one.

Keep block and trusted lists

The Caller lists section holds two lists:

Blocked numbers — calls from these numbers are always treated as spam.
Trusted numbers — calls from these numbers always connect, bypassing screening.

Select Block a number or Trust a number, enter the number, and add an optional label of up to 80 characters. Enter numbers in E.164 form, such as +14155551212; a ten-digit number without a country code is read as United States or Canada.

A number can only be on one list. Adding it to the other list is refused until you remove the existing entry, and blocking a number also clears any trust that number had earned automatically.

The Source column separates the two kinds of trusted entry:

Manual entries are the ones you added. They never expire, and the Expires column shows a dash.
Earned trust entries are added automatically when a caller passes screening. They expire after 30 days unless another passing call renews them.

Use Edit to change a label and Remove (or Clear, for an earned entry) to delete a row. Clearing earned trust is temporary — that caller can earn it again on a future screened call, so block the number instead if you want it kept out for good.

You can also add to either list from a call. Open an inbound call in Records > Call Log, go to its Screening tab, and select Mark as spam or Mark as trusted. Marking a caller as spam blocks the number for you and contributes one anonymized report to the screening network; marking as trusted only affects your own list.

Review what screening decided

Review a screened call looks up one call’s decision by its Call SID (beginning CA) or its call ID. Enter the identifier and select Review. The same breakdown appears inline on the Screening tab of any inbound call in the Call Log.

The breakdown opens with the disposition, the mode the call was screened under, the risk band, and the score, then splits the signals:

Your signals — the caller attestation the carrier network supplied, and whether the number matched one of your lists.
Vendor signal — the vendor’s verdict, its score, and which provider supplied it.
Network signal — the crowd verdict and band from the screening network. It reads “Hidden — not enough reports” until enough businesses have reported the number.

Caller attestation describes how well the originating carrier vouched for the number. Full attestation lowers the risk score; partial or gateway attestation, and an outright failure, raise it. Your own list match outranks everything else: a trusted number scores zero and a blocked number scores 100.

Watch screening activity

Screening activity summarizes your own screening — no other business’s data appears here. It reports Calls scored, Connected through, Flagged, and an Observe / enforce split, with per-disposition and per-attestation counts underneath when there is anything to show. The figures cover all screened calls to date.

Use Connected through as the safety check while you tune thresholds. It counts every caller who was not hung up on, including callers diverted to a screening menu, because they can still reach you.

Expected result

The settings you save are reflected on the next inbound call from an outside number. In observing mode, the analytics and each call’s Screening tab record what screening would have done. In enforcing mode, callers over the enforcement threshold take the override action, and everyone else follows your normal schedule and routing.

Troubleshooting

The page says screening isn’t enabled: Screening is switched on per phone system by Steer Phones. Contact Steer Phones to have it turned on.
A flagged caller still rings through: The mode is Observing, or the override action is set to None, or the caller scored between the flag and enforcement thresholds. All three connect the call by design.
Save stays disabled: The override action is Send to a call menu but no menu is selected, or nothing has changed since the last save.
A number cannot be added: It is already on the other list — remove it there first — or it is already on this list. The message names the number and the list.
A trusted number reappears as expired: It was an earned-trust entry rather than one you added. Add it manually if it should never expire.
A legitimate caller keeps getting screened: Add the number to the trusted list, or open the call in the Call Log and select Mark as trusted. If it happens across many callers from one area, raise the enforcement threshold.
The network signal is hidden: Too few businesses have reported that number for a crowd verdict to be shown. Your own signals and the vendor signal still apply.
Marking a caller fails: The call has to be an inbound call from an outside number in E.164 form. Internal calls and calls with no usable caller number cannot be marked.