Hiya: Spam Blocker

This app was meant to be able to look up who is calling you/identify incoming calls and enhance blocking options. Now they are mostly focused on being a call screener. Rather than the first screen being the lookup screen it’s now a nag screen to enable call screening. I didn’t buy this to screen my calls. I bought this to identify calls manually. Now I have to go to the “keypad” section and there is supposed to be a paste lookup button at the top. Sometimes it’s there and sometimes it’s not. And when it is there I have to give it permission to paste every single time even when I choose always allow and confirm in Settings that the permission is always allow. Lately more often than not the button is not there unless I restart my phone making it more of a nuisance than a help. Don’t think I’ll be renewing since the whole purpose of the app is to allow me to lookup calls when I want and now it’s become very cumbersome and they are just interested in me in allowing them to intercept my calls, which I don’t want. I have all the updates of everything on my phone so that isn’t the issue. The app has been problematic since they implemented the call screening. No longer worth it. It has gone from best app for call identification to very low on the totem pole. Many apps now that handle it better. Another case of an app going from doing something well to an app trying to do everything and now doing none of it well.

This is a great app for blocking numbers after the fact...after u tell it to block numbers for u...but it never blocks them ahead of time. So u still have to receive the incessantly annoying amounts of scamming & telemarketing calls throughout the day!!!!! When u look up numbers, it will say that the name is available to u, but only if u upgrade to their premium service, which is another annoyance in itself!!!! So I still have at least 10-20 calls from unknown numbers I have to input into their system, write a report for & wait for them to block for me. There should be a feature where u can save the reports u have entered so u don’t have to keep thinking of new ones & re-typing them every time. It is very time-consuming when u have to report as many as I do every day, especially when they don’t block the numbers after your first report. Sometimes u have to submit 2 or 3 before they will block them!!! So I sometimes spend up to an hour (or more) on this app per day when I receive more than 5 spam calls. I ought to at least get a discount on the service for having to use it so much!!!!

This app has discontinued many free features and made them premium, with a subscription. But the parts that are remaining do not work well. I have the setting to Block Scam and Fraud, and Spam calls- but it doesn’t. At least, not all the time. I don’t know if it actually blocks any. I still get them, and there is no icon warning that it’s a scam or fraud. Just got another one today, with no indication- but after the call and voicemail, I checked the number on Hiya- there was a months worth (over 45) of reports and comments left, all reporting the same scam. If they haven’t picked up that number then they need to figure out why not. The listing on my recent calls still shows nothing, no comment, no icon. Update, weeks later: I had two calls yesterday, one of which I missed and one I declined, from the same number. No indication what they were. I checked later on Hiya and found that they were “debt collectors”- only after I checked did the icon for that appear in my recent calls list for this number. Hiya is always open on my phone, so even if it’s a recent number it should be updated. Another update: telemarketers’ calls are not labeled as such. I’m not sure if it’s worth keeping this app on my phone- it hasn’t “warned” of anything, but I get voicemail messages from telemarketers, since I don’t answer calls from unknown callers.