Turn on Text Message Filtering on iOS devices

Text Message Filtering in Mobile Security can detect SMS spam messages and sort them into Transactions, Promotions, and Junk dedicated folders on your iPhone. Turn on Text Message Filtering to start sorting text messages from potential scammers.

Apple does not provide a method for Mobile Security and other third-party apps to determine if spam filtering is turned on for SMS messages. As a result, Mobile Security’s Dashboard cannot display whether Text Message Filtering is on or off. See the following article for more about Text Message Filtering.

iOS 26 devices

To turn on Text Message Filtering:

1. On your device, open the Messages app.
2. On the top right, tap on the three horizontal lines .
3. In the dropdown, tap Manage Filtering.
4. Toggle Screen Unknown Senders On.
5. Tap Text Message Filter, then tap Malwarebytes.
6. When Use "Malwarebytes" to filter your messages? appears, tap Use.

To turn off Text Message Filtering:

1. On your device, open the Messages app.
2. On the top right, tap on the three horizontal lines .
3. In the dropdown, tap Manage Filtering.
4. Toggle Screen Unknown Senders Off.

iOS 17 and 18 devices

To turn on Text Message Filtering:

1. On your device, open the Settings app.
2. Scroll down and tap Apps.
3. Scroll down, tap Messages. 
4. Under Message Filtering, tap Unknown & Spam.
5. Toggle Filter Unknown Senders on, then tap Malwarebytes.
6. In the confirmation screen, tap Enable.

To turn off Text Message Filtering:

1. On your device, open the Settings app.
2. Scroll down and tap Apps.
3. Scroll down, find and tap Messages.
4. Under Message Filtering, tap Unknown & Spam. 
5. Turn the Filter Unknown Senders toggle Off.

If you want to prevent text messages from trusted phone numbers from being filtered by Text Message Filtering, learn how to add a phone number to the Allow list.