A friend called me asking if I knew how to keep the pervy text messages from showing on her iPhone. I did not, though I was pretty sure there must be a way. Apparently Android phones have had filtering on text messages for a while now, while iPhones started that option with iOS 13. The basic way to do that is to go to Settings, Messages, and toggle the Filter Unknown Senders. Once that is done, a filter option shows in your Messaging App that allows some filtering options.

I have several articles on this HERE, HERE, and HERE. Try it out.

​Are you getting a ton of spam text messages? How annoying is it to be interrupted with a notification on your iPhone, only for it to be yet another junk message? Here's a secret: you can make these go away using a feature already in iOS.
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Here's how you do it. First, open Settings. Scroll down and down and down until you find Messages. Tap it.

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​Next, scroll down and down and down until you find "Filter Unknown Messages." This is the magic. Turn it on. You'll have to scroll almost three pages to find this thing, but it's worth it.

​That's it. Now, if you go into your messages app, you'll see tabs at the top of the screen. On the left will be "Contacts & SMS" which will contain messages from known contacts in your address book. On the right will be the new "Unknown Senders" tab.

​This may send some of your two factor identification codes to unknown sender so be aware.  

Most people don’t run these jobs, but I’m including them in this article because they can be quite helpful. CHKDSK has been around a very long time, but SFC is newer and I forget about it sometimes. And the third one, DSIM, I’d not heard of. These tools can be useful if you are having problems with your system. The type of problems will determine which tool you will want to use. I am including a detailed article about these tools and when to use them HERE.

​Make a backup before doing this stuff, just in case. And in fact, make a backup anyway if you haven’t done so in a while.

Brian is on a fire call so I thought I'd share some tips on Chrome.  He'll be back with Tech Tips next week.

I use Google News as my basic news feed. It gives an overall selection of the news, no doubt monitoring what I read and then tailoring my experience to what it thinks I’m interested in. I can’t say it does a very good job, and recently it changed, and not for the better.
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I was saying to Carol how I was getting really fluffy news feeds lately and she told me I could edit my sources. An article on how to do that is HERE.

I had never noticed the 3 little dots at the bottom of the headlines, so look closely. This allows me to say I don’t like this source at all, or to send me more, or less from this source. I remember in the early days I could do a general selection on topics, like sports, and decide if I wanted more sports, or less (less please). I can’t find that anymore, but this is a great alternative.

As a tie-in to the AVFD article, I have the Kim Komando article HERE, about calling 911 from your smartphone.  Calling 911 in an emergency is critically important, and your smartphone can help. Learn how to use it and also, put your medical info in your phone so an EMT can find it when necessary. Learn about that HERE.

As a health device, the smartphone can be a great tool, especially when used with a corresponding smartwatch. I’ve recommended this before. While I love smartphones for being powerful computers in your pocket, the smartwatch really ties things together.

I don’t even use a lot of features on my iWatch, but some that I use a lot are: talking to it. I ask Siri to call Carol when I’m driving, send a text message, set a timer for me or an alarm. It keeps track of my “fitness”, which is fairly pathetic, but a real motivator for my mom and Carol.
The watch can also track heart rate, and send a report to your doctor if you want. These devices are getting more and more sophisticated, able to track your heart rate, Blood Pressure, and even run a single lead ECG. It won’t be long before they will be able to non-invasively monitor what’s in your blood, which they can do now by attaching to more standard and invasive devices.