Benjamin Franklin told us that there are only two inevitable things: “Death and taxes.” If he lived in the modern world, however, he may have added a third item to the list: “Spam.” No matter what medium of communication we discuss, there’s bound to be some form of spam involved – whether that’s junk mail, spam email messages, or unsolicited phone solicitations. While some measures have been taken to prevent all forms of spam, some will inevitably get through, and prevention for certain forms of spam (such as over-the-phone sales calls) are hard to avoid.

That’s presumably why Google Voice made its most recent innovation: adding a global spam filtering option to their settings menu. Google is confident that it can predict which calls are originating from spam numbers, based both on their own tools and on the feedback of users “who mark calls as spam everyday [sic],” according to the Google Voice blog entry announcing the feature. This list is used to prevent any spam caller from reaching you, even via voicemail or text.

The spam filtering isn’t enabled by default, however. Here’s how to enable this new layer of anti-spam:

• Log into Google Voice.
• Click on the settings icon and choose “Voice Settings.”
• Go to the “Calls” section.
• Check the box next to “Send calls and text messages…”
• Click “Save changes.”

Calls, voicemails, and texts from spam numbers will now be redirected to your spam folder. You can still take a look at these messages in that folder and can mark specific messages and numbers as “Not Spam,” giving Google a better sense of which numbers should actually be redirected both for you and other users. This spam filtering is compatible with all Google Voice accounts and devices that are using Google Voice to handle calls.