BaitBlockReport a text Let the fish in.
Enable BaitBlock in your iPhone’s message filtering settings. We’ll walk you through it.
See the setup guideA LITTLE FISH. A BIG JOB.
Loan sharks
hate this
app.
Free the fish. Stop the sharks.
BaitBlock helps catch unwanted loan pitches from unknown senders — right on your iPhone.
Made for iPhone · App Store release coming soon
UNWANTED LOAN TEXTS↓
UNWANTED FINANCING OFFER
KEEP THE CONVERSATION.
LOSE THE LOAN PITCH.✳
LOSE THE LOAN PITCH.✳
Analysis stays on your iPhone No account needed You’re in control
BEHIND THE LOAN TEXTS
Who’s on the
other end?
Watch More Perfect Union’s investigation into loan-shark texts.
Independent reporting by More Perfect Union. Opens on YouTube.
WATCH ON YOUTUBE ↗MORE PERFECT UNION
I Texted A Loan Shark Back. What I Uncovered Will Shock You.
LESS BAIT. MORE BREATHING ROOM.
A quieter phone.
In a few taps.
No more chasing a new number every day.
BaitBlock looks for the financing pitch.
Set your boundaries.
Don’t expect financing offers by text? Leave “Block financing offers” on. You can change it anytime.
Keep it on your phone.
The filter analyzes eligible messages on your device. Your inbox isn’t sent to our servers.
Our privacy promiseA LITTLE SCIENCE. A QUIETER PHONE.
How does it work?
New number. Different wording. Same old loan pitch. We train BaitBlock to recognize the pattern.
CLASS IS IN SESSION.Start with examples.
We use public SMS datasets and real financing pitches, alongside ordinary messages people want to receive. AI-generated variations add different ways of saying the same thing.
Learn the pitch.
A trained language model learns patterns across words and phrases. It looks beyond a single keyword or phone number, so changing “business loan” to “working capital” doesn’t mean starting from scratch.
Test the tricky stuff.
We remove duplicates and keep similar messages together when splitting the data. Then we test on examples held out of training, checking both missed pitches and wanted messages caught by mistake.
Put the learning on your phone.
The compressed model ships inside the app. It checks eligible texts from unknown senders on your iPhone, without uploading your inbox or asking an online chatbot.
WHERE YOU COME IN
Today’s report can help tomorrow’s filter.
When you choose to submit a message for model improvement, we review it and remove identifying details before preparing useful training examples. New versions are retrained, tested, and delivered through app updates. A report helps inform that process; it doesn’t instantly change your filter.
A little more geeky?
Our text encoder turns words and word pieces into numbers that capture language patterns. Training adjusts those numbers to distinguish financing pitches from other texts. Core ML runs the compressed model on your iPhone. Generated examples broaden the training material, but fresh real-world examples are essential for checking how well it works.
FREE THE FISH. STOP THE SHARKS.
Help improve BaitBlock.
Something slipped through? Share a text you didn’t want.
Reviewed examples help us improve future filters.
IN THE APP+50 XP
Per accepted, unique report.
Earn gear for your fish.
GOOD QUESTIONS.
A little more
clarity.
Does BaitBlock read all my messages?
No. iOS passes eligible messages from unknown senders to the filter. Analysis happens on your iPhone. We only receive a message when you choose to submit a report.
What about iMessage and my contacts?
BaitBlock does not filter iMessage. iOS controls which unknown-sender messages reach third-party filters; messages from contacts are not passed to BaitBlock.
Will it catch every unwanted message?
No filter is perfect. BaitBlock focuses on English business financing pitches and can make mistakes. Check your filtered messages regularly, especially if you are expecting a loan-related text.
Are the powerups stronger filters?
No — just a little personality. Armor, Laser Eyes and the rest are cosmetic rewards. Equipping one doesn’t change your filter.