What to Do If You Accidentally Reported a Text as Junk on iPhone

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Plus, how to recover the texts mistakenly reported as spam

Co-authored by Hannah Dillon Reviewed by Luigi Oppido

Last Updated: August 12, 2025 Fact Checked

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• Recovering Texts Reported as Junk
|
• What Marking as Junk Does
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• Turning On Message Filtering
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• Tips

|Show more |Show less

If you accidentally tapped the "Report Junk" button on a text message that wasn't spam, you may be wondering how you can unsubmit that report. Unfortunately there's no way to take back a junk text report, but rest assured that reporting a text as junk by mistake won't have an impact on you or the sender. Plus, you can recover the texts that were accidentally reported in a few simple taps.

Is It Bad to Accidentally Report a Junk Text?

If you accidentally report a text as junk, you might worry that the sender will be listed as a spammer. Thankfully, this is not the case—Apple and your carrier are good at deciphering which numbers are actually spammers. So while it sounds serious, sending a mistaken junk text report won't have any negative effects.

Steps

Section 1 of 3:

Recovering Texts Reported as Junk

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1. 
   There's no way to unreport a text as junk, but you can recover the message. When you report a message as junk, it is deleted and sent to your "Recently Deleted" folder. To recover a deleted text message, follow these steps:

   • Open the Messages app, if it's not already open.
   • Tap Edit in the top-left corner. If you have message filtering turned on, tap Filters in the top-left corner instead.
   • Tap Recently Deleted.
   • Select the conversation(s) you want to restore.
   • Tap Recover in the bottom-right corner.
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Section 2 of 3:

What Marking as Junk Does

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1. 
   1
   Marking a text as junk deletes it and forwards the information to Apple. The information forwarded includes the sender's number and the contents of the messages. If you're on an iPhone or an iPad with a cellular plan, this information will also be sent to your phone provider.
2. 
   2
   Marking a text as junk does not prevent that number from contacting you. The only way to keep a number from sending you texts is to block them. To learn how to block someone's number on an iPhone or iPad, read this wikiHow.
3. 
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   You can only mark certain texts as junk. If the sender is on your contacts list or you've responded to the message, you can't mark it as junk. However, if you are deleting multiple messages at once and you select a conversation that is eligible to be reported and one that is **not** eligible to be reported, the option to report the messages as junk will still appear.

   • The only messages that will be reported as junk are the ones that are eligible to be reported.
4. 
   4
   Reporting a text as junk accidentally will not negatively affect the sender. While it sounds somewhat serious, reporting a text as junk by mistake won't affect the sender.

   • Cellular carriers use algorithms that rely on machine learning to determine which numbers are likely to be spam. Two things that these algorithms look for are volume and frequency, so a number reported once or twice by accident likely won't get added to a list of known spam numbers.
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Section 3 of 3:

Turning On Message Filtering

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1. 
   1
   Open your iPhone settings and select Messages. Message filtering will sort your messages into two folders: one for messages from your contacts (known senders) and one for messages from unknown senders.
2. 
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   Scroll down and toggle Filter Unknown Senders. With message filtering turned on, when you mass delete conversations from your Known Senders folder, you won't get the option to report them as junk.

   • This is because you can't have a mixed selection of conversations from known senders (unable to be reported as junk) and unknown senders (able to be reported as junk) when deleting from the Known Senders folder.
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Tips

• While reporting messages as junk on accident won't have an inherently negative impact on the sender, you should still report legitimate spam and junk text messages as junk.
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• To avoid accidentally reporting a message as junk from someone, add them to your contact list. Messages from your contacts can't be reported as junk.
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