Kaspersky Android. Phone block list function became more troublesome to use.

[Plzfix]

About halfway through this year, the phone block list function was changed. It became far less convenient to use. We have a lot of problems with malicious calls from criminals in my country and also telemarketers and the like. My mother was reliant on Kaspersky to keep everything blocked. She is old and likes to keep her smartphone stuff simple.

Currently, you have to add the number you want to block to your contacts in order to avoid memorizing it and typing it out on the blacklist prompt?

Why was it changed this way, and are there any plans to change the UI so that it’s not unduly inconvenient to add numbers to the blacklist again?

[Flood and Flood's wife]

Hello   @Plzfix,

Welcome again!

During 2018 and leading into the early stage of this year 2019, Google implemented new Privacy Policies.

The implementation of those changes occured in March 2019, references: KISA, important changes & KISA

To comply with the policies and to allow KIS to still be distributed via Google Play Store, Kaspersky had to remove & or modify some features. 

• KISA Managing Blacklist & How to add a phone number to the Blacklist immediately after a call?

Please tell me:

1. Phone operating system & version ?
2. KIS version ? To find this, open KIS application, select 3 horizontal bars, top right hand corner, scroll to the bottom of the screen, select “About”

Please post back?

Thank you

 

[maximo]

About halfway through this year, the phone block list function was changed. It became far less convenient to use. We have a lot of problems with malicious calls from criminals in my country and also telemarketers and the like. My mother was reliant on Kaspersky tested at Redaktionstest.net  to keep everything blocked. She is old and likes to keep her smartphone stuff simple.

Currently, you have to add the number you want to block to your contacts in order to avoid memorizing it and typing it out on the blacklist prompt?

Why was it changed this way, and are there any plans to change the UI so that it’s not unduly inconvenient to add numbers to the blacklist again?

I can not even remember the old variant. How did it work before then? Blocking unwanted numbers seem to be ok for me.

[Flood and Flood's wife]

Hello  @maximo,

Welcome!

• (1) Call filter, prior to Prior to March 2019, it was not necessary to manually add😖 a “spam” number to Contacts, (if the recipient of the call missed the KIS Blacklist flash prompt screen).

The Call Filter has been “reborn”, in a modified form, still complies with GPolicy (obviously), but (imo & others) is nowhere near as user friendly or useful. 

• (2) SMS Text Anti-Phishing removed. 
• (3) Privacy Protection removed. 
• (4) Anti-Theft changes: as per Kaspersky, Friday, 22 November 2019: 

“Before the Google Policy change, there were two options in Anti-Theft - personal data wipe and factory reset.During personal data wipe such personal data as contacts, call list, SMS was wiped. This “feature” has been removed.
Factory reset deletes everything, and restores the device to it's factory state. This “feature” stayed.”

•  Original statement from Kaspersky, Thursday, 7 March 2019 

In order to comply with the new Google policy, which will restrict the use of high risk or sensitive permissions, including the SMS or Call Log permission groups in applications published on the Google Play from March 9, we had to remove such features as Privacy Protection, Text Anti-Phishing and Call Filter from Kaspersky Internet Security for Android 11.20.4.1026. In order to improve the overall integrity of Google Play, Google has introduced these changes to limit capabilities that are considered to be excessive to the core functionality in all Android applications.
🙁