412 days

Rosa Golijan

App unmasks blocked and private phone numbers

Do you hate it when "BLOCKED" or "PRIVATE" appears on your phone screen instead of a caller's actual phone number? Thanks to a new iPhone app which'll unmask all those calls, you might never have to deal with that particular annoyance again.

The Next Web reports that TrapCall, an app which has been available for BlackBerry and Android devices for a while, has finally been approved by Apple — after a 201-day wait. This means that TrapCall is available in the App Store right now.

The app itself is free, but in order to actually use it you'll have to sign up for TrapCall's monthly service. It's pay-as-you-go (meaning that you can cancel it at anytime) and prices range from $4.95/month to $24.95/month.

How do things work once you've signed up for the service?

Simple. TrapApp will guide you through a simple setup process and from then on whenever you receive a call you wish to unmask, you'll tap your iPhone's power button twice and wait for the device to ring again — this time with the phone number revealed. 

The reason this works is because of something called conditional forwarding. Here's what that means:

Conditional call forwarding works by forwarding all your unanswered, busy and rejected calls to a number that you program your phone to forward to. When signing up for TrapCall, you program your conditional call forwarding to send all these calls to TrapCall for unmasking and to take advantage of our additional features, such as call recording. This also means all your calls go through TrapCall before being sent to your carrier's voicemail or TrapCall's voicemail, depending on TrapCall's compatibility with your carrier's voicemail.

That's it. Pretty simple, no?

It's worth noting that TrapCall currently supports AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile and Sprint. It is U.S-only, but is currently not available in Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico

Related stories:

• App enables expensive long-distance parenting
• New app automatically shares photos with everyone near you
• 'Creepy' app locates anyone using photos

Rosa Golijan writes about tech here and there. She's a bit obsessed with Twitter, loves to be liked on Facebook, and avoids answering blocked calls.