Hiya: Spam Blocker & Caller ID Reviews

I love Hiya and thanks to its features I am not getting so many spam, and annoying calls. Even being on the Governments DoNot Call List does not stop these Telemarkerter’s and scammers as they change numbers so frequently. Hiya with a huge community reporting these behaviors at least gives a person a heads up before answering their phone. Now they have added a feature which you can buy if you have the need too that identifies the caller ID. Just not having my phone ring 20 times a day with these nonsense callers is finally giving me some peace. Scammers/crooks are always trying to find ways around these apps. and are changing their numbers frequently. They use computers and all kinds of methods to try to scam and steal from innocent hard working people. Hiya does help to protect people from that but always beware not to give out personal information nor send money to anyone you don’t know. I tell them I buy nothing over the phone and to submit their information using the US Mail. In the two years I have had Hiya nothing ever came through the US mail. Too dangerous nowadays to even bother with these people. Hiya will actually help you to actually block and report them to your social community which in turns helps others. I highly recommend Hiya to every age group especially Seniors.

Hiya 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 this app- 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 this app 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. this app 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 Hiya 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.

Hiya is undoubtedly the best of this type. It was free for several years and I loved it. When it began to charge $3/mo or $15/year, I did not hesitate to go for the latter. The problem came when on my wife’s phone, having Family Membership, I downloaded this app and upgraded to Premium. The usual message from Hiya Store is “A Family Member already purchased this, so you can obtain it for free.” With this app, however, my wife’s phone was billed to my account. I chatted with the iTunes Store and they cancelled the charge, but told me I needed to contact the developer to have my wife’s phone also have this app Premium. However, there is no way of doing that. “App Support”, both here on Hiya Store and on the website, consists of FAQ’s and blogs, with no way of telling your story outside of a review such as this one. Hope it helps. UPDATE on July 2019: after several years the above has not been fixed. NEW PROBLEM: on March 8, 2019, I changed my number TT&T has a policy of letting a number rest 90 days before re-assigning it. this app and several others report my new number as belonging to one Kenny Sanchez. Only the “Lookup” app has been correct from a few days after I changed my number. Today is July 27, nearly five months and this app continues to say my number belongs to a person who quit the number eight months ago! WOEFULLY OUT OF DATE!! I quit my subscription and will get “Lookup”.

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 Hiya 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!!!!

Lost all 347+ numbers I had personally entered to block over the last several years for no apparent reason whatsoever. Very upsetting to say the least! I did not clear any history. The only thing I can think of is I powered my iPhone down a couple of days ago because it had been a while since I had rebooted it OR it was when I had to force close Hiya because I was not getting any notification for calls I was expecting & waiting on. Phone did not ring nor show a call coming in as they were being blocked and going straight to voicemail with no notification of a new voicemail. OR maybe it’s from the newly revamped app. No matter the reason for the disappearance of the numbers I had entered...it’s quite disturbing and extremely frustrating.

Got a nuisance call today and when I went to enter that number to block I was shocked to see all of my numerous previously entered numbers to block were no longer there. Because of all the numbers I had previously entered I had rarely been receiving any spam, nuisance, or telemarketer call. Now my phone is blowing up with them!! Prior to today, I loved Hiya and would have given a 5 star rating at any point over the last several years because of it’s superior performance BEFORE this latest update and revamping of Hiya !! Now I am going to have to tediously enter lots of numbers that should still be showing to block in my app and also should actually be being blocked.

I expected this app to flag calls as they happen which it does infrequently. However, If a call has not been previously recorded into their database you have to go to your phone log, copy the number, paste it into the lookup function, and then have this app look up the number. If it is spam, you then have mark it as a blocked call, flag the type nuisance call it is, and provide further details in order for the listing to be useful for others using Hiya . In other words, this app relies on everyone reporting numbers and providing additional meta-data to build out its database. Spammers are constantly changing numbers so this copy, paste, add data routine is the process most of the time.

When logging a call if Hiya is ‘working in the background’ it does not automatically read the copied phone number from cache so you have to manually paste it into the lookup function before it finds the number. You have to shut Hiya down and restart it every time if you want it to automatically pull the number from the copy puffer - also annoying; adding more steps than what seems necessary.

They really should not charge for this since users are actually building their database for them not too mention that it takes too many too many steps to be convenient. Maybe simpler to just block calls in the iPhone app.

I got Hiya out of necessity when I got an IRS scam call that almost fooled me in spite of being skeptical at first. After I picked up on his tricks and called him out on it, I’m pretty sure he sold my information, and I’ve had a steady stream of spam calls since then that I didn’t get before. this app has done a decent job of helping me identify which callers I should be calling back, since I don’t pick up unknown numbers anymore. But I admit I’ve been disappointed during the years I’ve used it that it’s not been great at real time call identification. It’s gotten somewhat better recently, but still leaves something to be desired. Additionally, one update in the last year has nearly driven me crazy, and I’m about to give up on Hiya - if you ever force close Hiya , it brings up a notification that your spam protection has been reduced, and basically you have to keep Hiya open all the time if you want full protection. I feel like this should be able to function without me always keeping Hiya open in the background, and I think they could probably do a better job at this. Aside from that, Hiya does a decent job with identifying spam calls, though I wish it provided more details as well about who’s calling exactly when it comes to undesirable calls.

I was with AT&T. AT&T have a similar service such as this one to block and inform the person receiving the call if it’s A scam, Tele marketing, spoof calling, and etc. I think Hiya can do a better job at notifying us if the number is a potential spoof number. We don’t find out unless we answer and don’t get a response and have to call back to realize that the number is a non-working number. I’m sure this isn’t the first time these scammers or pests, called someone that has Hiya. By sharing the reported number, than Hiya can notify the receivers of these annoying calls can get a heads up and we don’t have to answer and have a choice to block it if need be! I appreciate that Hiya service does give us more control and that does prevent innocent or real business calls from being Blocked Automatically! But Hiya is giving no warnings of a number being a possible bad Caller. The people that are doing this, are catching on to not use any number that starts with mine. They just pull random numbers. If enough people report this, than Hiya can be a lot more proactive and giving the receiver of the call, a possible Warning! I’m not with AT&T any longer, so I cannot use their service and your service is the next best thing pat gives the user a lot more control instead of blocking potential Important numbers! Please work on this.

This was once, by far, one of the best apps of its kind. Unfortunately, it has gotten worse with every update over the past year. It is now more of a nuisance than a service. It has gotten to the point that it regularly lets through calls, that it actually identifies as spam. Quite frankly I’ve gotten tired of having my phone ring only to see that the service supposedly already blocks that number. For that matter, it is utterly ridiculous that it will ring on one of my two phones but not the other. It is the same app with the same settings and updates but on one device it is blocked and on the other it rings. In general it has also become buggier and buggier with each update. As an example, I’m equally tired of going into phone settings and seeing that not all three of the this app options are activated. This is happening on both my iPhone 7 and an iPhone 11.

There are other issues as well, however, I see no need to laundry list them. I strongly encourage the developers to take a hard look at their app and clean it up. I also encourage consumers to not waste their money on it until they do. There are numerous options on the market and I don’t see this as worth the time or money until they deal with the problems. Stop playing with enhancements and a prettier interface and fix the core functionality.

I loved this product when it came out. I get tons of spam calls and being able to block them once and not worry about that one again was really helpful. I still have to block more daily almost but it does make me think I’m making a dent in the sea of unwanted calls. I used the search feature and being able to read others comments on a number to decide whether to block or not. Now that is gone. I even believe the service provided is worth charging for Hiya but not charging every month for it.

This information is free information but multiple companies are trying to profit off making this information easy to get but all thy have all done is make it impossible to google search and get the info for Free because all the companies pop up first that want you to pay for that free information. I am disabled and love on fixed income that doesn’t even cover my bills let alone a subscription monthly to be able to search phone numbers before blocking them. AT&T has total protect also provided by this app and is free and it doesn’t allow searches either so guess I will stick with them even though I did like your product better prior to “premium” being the features I really liked. I gave you 3 stars because it is still a good app it just isn’t as good as it was.

I found Hiya after a local news radio guy raved about how great it is. And he did it during a conversation with someone on the air spontaneously. That is how I know it was not a commercial. He commented after words that he shouldn’t have said it because he can get in trouble for that. He apologized and said that he was not doing a commercial and was not a paid spokesman for the company just a customer.
It really seems to work great. I run a small business here in a major American city and because of that my number is published in many locations. That means if I wanna keep getting customers I can’t change my number but I get constant telemarketers and scammers every day. They really try to take advantage of businesses because of the fact that they know that we cannot change or disconnect our numbers without going out of business. Sometimes I found that I was wasting 10 to 20 minutes per day on answering calls that were a total waste of time. That means over the course of the year I will save dozens of hours of my time and be able to really make more money talking to my customers, this app is well worth it.

So the free version of this app worked pretty well. At the time I was being seriously harassed. I’m an AT&T customer and discovered on my own that the this app logo was on the call protect app. I was told that it was upgraded version of this app and the this app developers confirmed that. I was also billed through Apple, not AT&T do it made sense. Until a couple of months ago when it just completely stopped working. Not even logging incoming calls. I stupidly called AT&T. I contacted this app when, after an update, I was directed to activate this app 1 and this app 2, this app 3 being premium. So I wrote as asked them why they were continuing to send me annoying ads when I had call protect, which is already the upgraded version, and by the way, it wasn’t even functional. They informed me that it was not the upgraded version. That they were 3 separate apps. When I replied to ask them kindly what exactly the differences were, because the descriptions were quite alike, and if it was accidental that an app I paid monthly for didn’t function at all, no further replies. So you’ve already shown me how dishonest you are, but yes. Let buy a subscription so that your next version will coincidentally stop this one from working and my money will have disappeared and been wasted. Sorry. I’m too clever to let you force me into your latest money scheme. And your customer service skills leave more to be desired than your apps do.

It’s been a blessing to not have to get so many Robo calls during the day. I used to get a lot more, but since I’ve started using this app I am receiving less and less, and having the calls screened for Scam, Fraud, and Telemarketing is a plus. Plus, even finding out who is calling me if I don’t answer is great when I want to look up the number.

Update June 2018: Hiya isn’t working as well lately, and I have been receiving IRS extortion calls from east coast numbers this entire week and Hiya is not picking up many of them. After I copy and paste the number, only a few come up extortion. I understand that not all numbers can be found, so we’ll see how Hiya handles more of them.

Update July 2018: Hiya is working better than last month. There have been a lot of local numbers coming up, but it’s picking them up more often now. Those pesky east coast numbers are still coming up, and the IRS scams still get through as the Robo callers are getting more tricky and finding other ways around them being blacklisted, but, all in all, so far so good.

Short version: The UI on Hiya is not clear. It seems overly complicated to me and has no familiar design elements to make it easy to use. I very nearly deleted it because I could not figure out how to enable blocking.

Long version: I could not figure out how to get Hiya to work. The UI is very vague. It looked to me like in order to block any spam calls, I had to enter in each spam number individually. As I dug through Hiya I saw no familiar design elements like iOS-style switches or check boxes so I couldn’t tell how to enable the service, aside from entering in the phone numbers individually. I was very frustrated and even wrote a negative review that never posted. So here I am again. What is different is that after reading through every section of Hiya (and there are more sections than seem necessary), I found that elements that look like tabs are actually check boxes. They don’t look like check boxes but they do the same thing. The problem is there is no visual cue that says “here’s what you are looking for!” You have to read everything. In today’s messed up world, I don’t have time to read everything and most apps don’t require you to. It seems odd to render your app useless to anyone who doesn’t take a moment to read. I almost deleted Hiya because it required so much of me. We’ll see how it does now that I know how to work it.

Hiya works as stated. I even paid for the premium subscription. My issues is that I have to copy and paste any suspicious number into Hiya . I was looking for an app that works along side the phone’s default app for incoming calls, where it identifies the incoming call before I answer it. With Hiya you have to either answer or decline the unknown incoming call, copy the number and paste it to Hiya to look the unknown number up. And the other issues is when I look up an unknown number, Hiya only gives you very basic information or no information at all on that number. For those reasons I rated Hiya 3 stars and cancelled my subscription.

In my opinion the developer relies on the users to do the work of identifying unknown calls, by having us report those calls. And another problem is that these companies or debt collectors can use burner numbers. So one instance the number belonged to someone legitimately and next that same number is being used for spam or whatever. There is tech available that can examine the origin of a number and tell the consumer (us) who is calling our cell phones in very accurate detail. I would love to see Hiya improve to such a level. Thanks.

I’m impressed with the basic protection Hiya provides. Especially for the free version! I would rate it even higher, but it seems even though I leave Hiya running all the time, I am constantly having to go back to Hiya , and reset the settings I previously selected. About once every couple weeks, I begin receiving a noticable number of spam calls coming through. When that happens, it’s my queue to go into IOS settings, and once again I have to set this app as my call protection. I also have to go into this app settings and reset things like the type of protection I want. I won’t upgrade to the premium protection until these little annoyances are fixed. Once fixed this could be a great app. Right now, I just see it as a good app. By the way, the feature just announced, that the dial pad protects you against calling a spam number? What is that? Why would Hiya developers think this is a good feature? How many spam numbers do you mistakenly call each day? Seems their time could have been better spent fixing things like persistent settings instead.

I loved your App for what it did for me but now I have to pay to get the name of the number of the perpetrator that is giving me a bad day from unwanted disruptive calls.
Thieves and thugs that are steeling anything that is possible from innocent rich and poor people need to be prosecuted to the extent of the law.
Until you change and restricted my usage to be able to get names from these unwanted calls. I was working on patterns from these calls and researching where most of the calls were generally 𝐜𝐨𝐦 𝐜𝐨coming from. I'm am disabled and can't work, so the disruptive calls began getting on my nerves in a way only you can know because of the business that you're running. But there are people like me that is trying to help your business in a way that you probably had not thought of.
I hope you understand that I don't have the money to pay for the upgrade but I would if I could.
Thank you for lending your ear and take time to thank of anyway that you can change my App. to a way it is more helpful to me so I in return can help you.

Maybe it’s just a coincidence, but since upgrading to the premium service, many apparent spam calls started getting through regularly. They come from a lot of different numbers that don’t show up in the this app database of spam type callers. They don’t ever have a name to identify them. They often come from my local or nearby area codes. And yes, I do have the option checked to block calls from my regional area that are suspected spam. I tend not to answer calls unless I know who they are from and specifically want to talk to them. So in fairness, I can’t be sure these are spam calls, but there is a great chance that they are because they never leave a voicemail. It wouldn’t seem like the premium service would cause what I am experiencing to occur, but who knows? Either way, the paid version hasn’t added much of any value that I didn’t already get from the free version. But it is my fault that I failed to get the free trial cancelled in time. If I had reviewed Hiya several months ago, I would have rated it 5 stars. Since it now fails to filter the vast majority of my unwanted calls, 3 is the best I’ll give it. Hope your experience with it is better than mine.

this app used to work well, but now it doesn’t. I recently upgraded to an iPhone 11 Pro Max, and was unable to enable the this app premium features, which I’m paying for, in the phone settings. The only way I was able to enable the premium features was by uninstalling, which caused me to lose all my this app settings and blocked number list, and reinstalling. Then I was able to enable the premium features. But then a couple days later I noticed that calls from numbers in my contacts we’re going directly to voicemail. That was my fault. I needed to give this app access to my contacts. Once I did that everything seemed okay for a day. But then today, calls from my wife started going directly to voicemail again. I checked the settings and this app still had access to my contacts. This time, turning off neighbor spoofing didn’t help. In fact turning off all blocking within this app didn’t help. The only thing that worked was turning off this app all together in my phone settings. I don’t know if there’s an incompatibility between this app and iOS 13.1, or if this app is just broken. In any case, out of frustration I deleted this app and canceled my premium subscription, and will live with the new Silence Unknown Callers feature in iOS for now.

Hiya has been super helpful with preventing robocalls. However, Hiya is user based, and robocalls can be made from any number these days, even those that belong to actual people. Users of Hiya report spam calls like these which stop legitimate calls from coming through, and it sends them straight to voicemail. Hiya has an option to whitelist contacts, but it’s not a default option. I got a new phone and redownloaded Hiya and didn’t realize I didn’t have whitelist contacts on. My mom tried to call me and was sent straight to voicemail, as did my dad. I wasn’t getting notified about these calls and it took me like an hour to figure out the reason for this was because of Hiya, and whitelist contacts not being on. Obviously I would want calls from my own contacts to come through???

But I guess that means that Hiya is definitely working if calls from my own dang parents weren’t coming through. And since using this over like the last year or so, I have noticed significantly less robo & spam calls. So, 4/5, would recommend.

Short version: The UI on Hiya is not clear. It seems overly complicated to me and has no familiar design elements to make it easy to use. I very nearly deleted it because I could not figure out how to enable blocking.

Long version: I could not figure out how to get Hiya to work. The UI is very vague. It looked to me like in order to block any spam calls, I had to enter in each spam number individually. As I dug through Hiya I saw no familiar design elements like iOS-style switches or check boxes so I couldn’t tell how to enable the service, aside from entering in the phone numbers individually. I was very frustrated and even wrote a negative review that never posted. So here I am again. What is different is that after reading through every section of Hiya (and there are more sections than seem necessary), I found that elements that look like tabs are actually check boxes. They don’t look like check boxes but they do the same thing. The problem is there is no visual cue that says “here’s what you are looking for!” You have to read everything. In today’s messed up world, I don’t have time to read everything and most apps don’t require you to. It seems odd to render your app useless to anyone who doesn’t take a moment to read. I almost deleted Hiya because it required so much of me. We’ll see how it does now that I know how to work it.

.UPDATE.. Still catches no spam calls. They all get thru and ring. This does not catch any spam texts either. I can see I need to find another way of looking up unknown numbers. This sometimes, shows you where the call is from. Anything else you have to pay preminm service. Which the way Hiya is failing, I could not imagine premium would be of any good either. I am DELETING....

Update... Hiya does not catch a single spam caller. I have this set to Block all spam calls. Does nothing. They are forcing you to pay for Hiya. I believe it still would not block or cstch any spam calls still. VERY DISSAPOINTED

I would like to know how these people are getting Hiya to stop all spam calls. It certainly is not doing this here. They are moving all the features to the PAID PREMIUM version. This at least finds the number, when you "copy" a # from your call log, and searches from there. All other apps you have to punch in a # to have Hiya search, only to say "# not found". You get that alot here too. There is not any app your going to find to look up a # without paying for it. I had Hiya when it used to be "white page lookup". It was free, and you usually got a name or bussiness, or let you know it was spam caller. All that went away when it changed to this app

I kept my family's phone number, after my mom's death. My family had had this number for 62 years! I wanted mom's friends to be able to find me, and I could inform them of her passing.
When I found Hiya, from channel 5 tech report. I was not sure I should down load it. You know all the various viruses and other bad things that get in your device. I did get it, and was just about jumping with joy! I grabbed my son, and showed him Hiya , telling him it would really be good to have on his phone... He got it, and with a couple shows of things I was using, he got his this app app the way he wanted.
It looks wierd to review from iPad, but my iPhone was charging. Hiya has prevented all the home improvement calls that that had been coming. I had told them I was a renter now. But they kept calling. Now, this app, can note under the caller's name (unless it's unlisted) whether the call is suspect as spam, or not. I can silence the call, then check with this app to see if the number was scam, or how high of scam suspected.

I love Hiya!!