Ask HN: Should you reply STOP to unwanted texts?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41703312

by yawn • 2 years ago

290 373 2 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

I have been advising people I know to block, then delete and report junk (iOS) to unwanted texts. Others have argued with me that you should reply STOP. I disagree, especially after checking a shortened link in a “campaign” text and finding the link was a phishing attempt. What do you think?

chatmasta2• 2 years ago

No. Reacting to any unwanted contact just moves you further into their funnel. Ideally don’t even open the text.

epcoa• 2 years ago

How does one “open a text”?

chatmasta2• 2 years ago

Depends on the platform, but generally speaking it requires taking whatever action changes its status from "unread" to "read." But even then, there has been at least one case of iOS malware that infected the system upon delivery of a text (since BlastDoor parsed the payload upon receipt, IIRC). That's one reason why Lockdown Mode rejects any text from unknown numbers.

mikesabat5• 2 years ago

Text messages don't have an "open" action. Replying STOP will unsubscribe the recipient from future SMS from this number. I have never seen an organization use an unsubscribe as a positive action in their funnel. There are less expensive and less risky ways to confirm that a phone number is valid for sure.

1_1xdev12• 2 years ago

How does one “open an email”

Same thing

Your messaging client may helpfully request the url they sent you to show a url preview.

In an email, your client renders the html including img tags (yes, this can be disabled, and may not even be default for most people anymore; it’s still a thing)

AStonesThrow4• 2 years ago

It used to be, on some mail readers, that "opening" an email message could unleash Pandora's Box, in terms of interpreting HTML, downloading images, attachments or whatever. I sincerely doubt that is even the case for the major providers such as Outlook or Gmail. And yeah, per comments downthread, my Android Messages app has "read/unread" and that's really the only thing that "opening a text" changes. There's no additional execution or activation like opening or executing a file.

happymellon2• 2 years ago

Does RCS remove the read receipt?

Back in the day, some systems used to acknowledge the request for a read receipt by default giving them the ability to determine if a number was actively watched.

Hopefully everything has it disabled by default these days.

autoexec3• 2 years ago

It used to be, on some mail readers, that "opening" an email message could unleash Pandora's Box, in terms of interpreting HTML, downloading images, attachments or whatever.

That's still true for both email and text messages.

Just opening text messages can infect your phone too. In one case, iphone users didn't even have to open the message (https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/apple-zero-cl...).

There have been similar problems with outlook allowing unread email to infect a device (https://www.csoonline.com/article/3486789/microsoft-outlook-...)

It doesn't matter what the platform is, spam is toxic and should be handled carefully and as little as possible.

autoexec3• 2 years ago

I agree. It's also worth noting that people have had their devices compromised just by opening a text message (for that matter iphones have been hacked just by receiving an invisible text) so it's probably best to delete any spam text unread.

solardev14• 2 years ago

It kinda depends on which platform handles their bulk messages. For example, if they are messaging you through Twilio, replying with "STOP" will cause Twilio itself to opt you out of messages (https://help.twilio.com/articles/223134027-Twilio-support-fo...), and the sender can't disable that (https://help.twilio.com/articles/360034798533-Getting-Starte...). It's kinda like how Mailchimp handles unsubscriptions for recipients, no matter what the sender wants.

However, if they're using some other carrier or rolling their own VOIP setup, etc., or sending from a toll-free number instead of a shortcode, there's no guarantee that their particular platform will honor STOP. And there's no way for you, as a recipient, to know which is which.

Generally I will reply STOP if it's something I know I signed up for but no longer want. Things I never signed up for just get reported as spam and I don't reply.

tomasreimers• 2 years ago

You can check if a number is using Twilio via a special number: https://www.twilio.com/en-us/blog/lookup-phone-carrier-recor....

blackeyeblitzar10• 2 years ago

Or a site like https://www.freecarrierlookup.com/ which works for every number

mikesabat5• 2 years ago

Speaking mostly for the US here.

The STOP keyword is mandated as unsubscribe at the carrier level (Verizon, ATT, TMo) not just the vendor level. So if you reply STOP, it's very likely that you will not receive another message from that number.

This will be true for any programmatic SMS vendor. There could be smaller scale & more manual approaches, but that would be rare.

There has been a big effort in the last year+ to clean up the space and require consent before any SMS is sent.

FWIW, somewhat surprisingly, my google pixel has an amazing spam filter for SMS and I rarely get SMS that I don't want.

What I want to know is, what's the purpose of those random texts that just say something like, "How's it been?" from a number that I've never communicated with? What's the angle there? Anyone know?

solardev14• 2 years ago

What I want to know is, what's the purpose of those random texts that just say something like, "How's it been?" from a number that I've never communicated with? What's the angle there? Anyone know?

My understanding is that they will pretend it's a wrong number, but then make a joke or talk about some innocuous hobby and try to build up trust over weeks/months to eventually phish or scam you. I forget where I read it (maybe reddit?) but there was a poster who mentioned a personal experience with one such scam, basically a fake romance scam that led to them losing tens of thousands of dollars wiring money to a fake person who pretended to have fallen in love with them over weeks of back and forth texting.

It doesn't have to work on everyone to be profitable, just the once-in-a-while lonely pensioner!

https://consumer.ftc.gov/consumer-alerts/2024/05/why-its-not...

https://www.robokiller.com/blog/how-to-identify-text-scams

gcanyon• 2 years ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLPpl2ISKTg

It's well worth the watch, but tl;dr: it's a long-con scam. They invest as long as it takes to establish a relationship with you, and then engage you to do something (crypto mostly, apparently) involving cash online. They will say they made a bunch of money, and point you at the super-easy online exchange they used. You buy the crypto, you see the crypto increase in value (because it has in the real world) so you buy more, and more and more.

The problems start when you say you want to cash out. They switch from "buy more, it's going up" to "there are fees to withdraw, just deposit another <whatever> and then you'll get the withdrawal amount plus <whatever>" and of course no money ever comes out.

Oliver interviews people who have lost hundreds of thousands of dollars this way, some of whom still believe that if they just toss in another <whatever> it will all be resolved and they'll get their money back. It's very sad, and I'm not doing the video justice.

DidYaWipe2• 2 years ago

Tell that to Rite-Aid. These jagoffs spam the crap out of people, even after you say STOP as they instruct: https://imgur.com/gallery/if-youre-too-dumb-to-follow-own-in...

locallost• 2 years ago

Yes, can confirm about the Pixel. I occasionally check my spam folder and it's always just spam, which I otherwise never get. So either no or rarely false positives or negatives.

Also on a side note, the scams are really horrific. Although obviously scams I can imagine especially the older people getting tricked with "hello grandad here's my new number". Makes me wonder what I'll be getting tricked with when I am old.

m463• 2 years ago

I've been getting presidential political messages, each from a different number.

wonder if STOP will work for only the same number, or globally.

I also know political messages have lots of loopholes, thanks to the politicians who create the laws.

danesparza2• 2 years ago

Aside from Pig Butchering (see other comments) this also verifies a number is real or in-use when somebody replies.

lukan• 2 years ago

"What I want to know is, what's the purpose of those random texts that just say something like, "How's it been?" from a number that I've never communicated with? What's the angle there? Anyone know?"

Some people are seriously lonely - eager to pick up any chance of real interaction. And those scams prey on that.

On telegram those spam usually comes together with a profile picture of a pretty women. With text only, it targets the imagination.

adastra2212• 2 years ago

There has been a big effort in the last year+ to clean up the space and require consent before any SMS is sent.

Unless it is political

dotnet00• 2 years ago

What I want to know is, what's the purpose of those random texts that just say something like, "How's it been?" from a number that I've never communicated with? What's the angle there? Anyone know?

I inadvertently replied to one of those spam messages because the number coincidentally matched the location a relative had recently moved to (I figured it was them trying to joke around while informing me of their new number, it was something along the lines of "Can you guess who I am?"). They replied with a picture of a girl and some question trying to start a conversation. So, I figure they're just fishing for easily tricked or lonely people to manipulate into sending them money.

FWIW I didn't notice much of an uptick in scam texts/calls after that.

tzs2• 2 years ago

The STOP keyword is mandated as unsubscribe at the carrier level (Verizon, ATT, TMo) not just the vendor level. So if you reply STOP, it's very likely that you will not receive another message from that number.

Is that just for programmatic messages, or all messages?

I could see problems if it was all messages. For instance suppose a relative coming to visit for weekend and due to arrive around 5 pm Friday. You get a text from them that afternoon saying that there was an accident that has blocked traffic and police say it will be several hours before the road reopens.

They ask if you would prefer that they continue as soon as the road reopens, which will probably mean they will arrive around 1 am Saturday, or stop and spend the night with another relative who lives near where they are currently stuck, and then come Saturday morning which will get them to your place around 9 am.

You text back "stop" to indicate the latter option, and now texts from that relative are blocked. Oops.

bunabhucan• 2 years ago

You need to up the swag on your online persona. I get this message from "rich horsey lady" periodically:

I'm Alyssa. are you the equestrian instructor that Tina referred me to?
I'm very sorry, I just checked the number and it was my assistant who sent the wrong number, I hope I'm not disturbing you.
Thank you for understanding, you are a friendly person, I have found the right number, your number and the riding instructor's number are only one number away, haha, it was a wrong encounter, but it was a kind of fate. Let me introduce myself, my name is Alyssa Chow what is your name?

Also got it from a "Lillian." I do hope they and her assistants find Tina's equestrian instructor.

gwbas1c• 2 years ago

FWIW, somewhat surprisingly, my google pixel has an amazing spam filter for SMS and I rarely get SMS that I don't want.

I still get notifications for these on my Pixel. I just don't want them.

karljacob• 2 years ago

Totally agree Only thing to add is for the U.S. its pretty easy to spin up a bunch of numbers so generally this will work only for a while. On the latter they are farming you for information Just confirming who you are is a mistake IMHO

Spooky234• 2 years ago

Someone signed my work phone up for MAGA nonsense - I get urgent messages from “Marco Rubio”. They done honor stop messages.

joecool10293• 2 years ago

Twilio is sort of a dream for spammers, they'll just make new accounts on it and spam campaigns on those new accounts. Political organizations do it all the time, if you get on a list you're never getting off. Lookup the numbers sending to you (Twilio's own lookup tool works great for this) and it almost always comes back Twilio/Zipwhip.

I only recommend responding STOP to short codes since there's more investment and vetting on getting a short code. Carriers will intercept the request for TFN/local numbers sometimes but I don't really trust it. These numbers are all going to be spammers buying pools of numbers to churn and burn. They'll just import their list into a new account if it unsubs.

Oh and btw, it's actually easier now as a spammer to tell when numbers get burned. A few years back when the CTIA handover on regs happened (and sending costs went up) the carriers finally started to respond with the delivery status of the sent messages. Before this they didn't respond and you only knew your provider delivered the messages to the carrier, not whether the carrier delivered them to the handset.

danielhughes2• 2 years ago

I think Twilio requires its customers to go through the process of registering with the CTIA before allowing use of the SMS API. I abandoned a project because the process was too burdensome. Political campaigns are exempt though.

IG_Semmelweiss• 2 years ago

Zipwhip is particuarly bad.

I report their spam to twilio, but twilio claima they cant do anything about spam from their sub

ZachSaucier• 2 years ago

Unsubscribing from one Mailchimp subscription doesn't remove you from any other subscriptions...

solardev14• 2 years ago

STOP doesn't either.

njovin• 2 years ago

Twilio actually does allow companies to opt out of the automatic STOP handling (I've done it while working on a txt automation system).

There is a tiny bit of vetting involved and you've got to be a slightly larger account, but it is possible, so it's not safe to assume that if the message is coming from Twilio that STOP will block them at the platform level.

sambf• 2 years ago

Worked for a company that offers marketing & transactional SMSes: our SMS provider relayed the STOPs and we were obligated to honor it, but the provider couldn't check it.

Also, the provider relayed the STOP to the last of their client that reached the number, they had no way to trace it back with 100% confidence.

add-sub-mul-div• 2 years ago

It pisses me off that Outlook no longer allows you to report something as spam anymore without also sending an unsubscribe. Because I do feel uncertainty of how that signal could be used.

golergka• 2 years ago

Never use SMS for anything other than the automatic notifications, so I really don't care in the first place.

js22• 2 years ago

I think it depends on the carrier. With Verizon, replying STOP seems to block the number. But I only do that with political texts (I get a lot of them). For phishing I just delete/report junk.

Waterluvian• 2 years ago

I approach texts and emails the same way as web servers and simply not respond.

STOP/HTTP 403/unsubscribe all tell the other end that the address has something there. You’ll end up just reinforcing your place on a list of phone numbers to pass around.

danny_taco• 2 years ago

In my experience it doesn't do much. For example, I made the mistake of contributing to the campaign of a politician. Now I get texts from candidates all over the country. If I reply STOP to one, I just get sent more texts from another number, for another candidate in another state. I just got tired of replying with STOP after the 20th time. This just guarantees I'm never giving any money to any candidate ever again.

sseagull• 2 years ago

I've been interested in donating before, but this is actually the main thing holding me back. I get so little spam and unwanted messages (email and text), and I am trying extremely hard to keep it that way.

So thanks for validating my decision :)

left-struck• 2 years ago

Use a email alias service like simple login, duck duck go’s private duck address etc You can disable that email alias and never receive emails sent to that address again

I wish we had something similar for phone numbers

FergusArgyll• 2 years ago

https://github.com/sdushantha/tmpmail

Super-throwaway email addresses in the terminal

mingus88• 2 years ago

I wish anyone from actblue would see this.

I gave a few small donations and foolishly didn’t use a disposable email address. That was over four years ago and I’m still getting over a dozen spam emails a day from candidates I have never even heard of.

Maybe there is some central actblue list I can opt out of but I don’t even think I created an account with them

Never donated a penny since

solardev14• 2 years ago

Your campaign donations are a matter of public record and Actblue harvests them and repackages them to sell to political campaigns and operatives. It's a shitty business model that preys upon an unfortunate part of federal law that most donors don't know about.

DominoTree• 2 years ago

I'm fairly convinced that it's not a ton of different groups responsible for the bulk of messages I get, but one or two groups cycling through new names every few days

If I don't reply "stop" to anything, it seems like one day "Retired Democrats PAC" will suddenly stop sending me messages and "Save Democracy PAC" will suddenly begin, and that pattern is what makes me think a single group is behind a lot of it.

If I do reply "stop" to one, of course they will stop from that PAC, but a few days later another one will always pop up and pick right back up.

Every few days I send out a mass "stop" to all of the numbers I've gotten messaged by, and it usually gives me 3-4 days of peace.

hdx• 2 years ago

Same happened to me, I replied saying I'd vote for Trump if I got another message ... never heard from them again ;)

rdtsc• 2 years ago

Ha! Worked for me, too. Heck it’s a minor request from a future president ready to run a country. Next week though “Hi I am Tim. I need that $40”. Well played, I only made the deal with Kamala, after all, ;-)

blackeyeblitzar10• 2 years ago

Note that US law has carve outs for politicians and their campaigns. They are exempt on both email and phone spam as I recall.

latency-guy2• 2 years ago

These people are terrorists to my email filters, what can I do to make their behavior really hurt?

teeray2• 2 years ago

This is why we need the OS to allow us to build filters to block them

solardev14• 2 years ago

In a previous election cycle, I made the mistake of donating a few thousand dollars to several candidates. Since then, I get spammed through the year, and close to a major election, it's dozens of emails and phone calls and text messages every week.

Thankfully, Gmail catches 99% of the spam emails and my Pixel phone filters out spam texts and calls. It has a built-in Google Assistant mode that screens unknown callers with a robot voice picking up and asking them to describe what they're calling about. Most of the callers just hang up as soon as they hear that, and if they don't and actually say they're calling about so-and-so candidate, I just click the block button.

I tried to switch to iPhone for a few weeks (for iMessage), but the spam problem was SO bad (even with Robocaller and some SMS spam filtering app) that I switched back to Android. Google's spam blocking is phenomenal on the Pixel, but they barely even advertise it. It's an afterthought for them, but a lifesaver for me. My phone would be completely unusable without it.

----------------

In the back of my mind, I keep thinking it'd be cool to have an app that automatically looks up whoever the candidate is running against and automatically donating 10 cents (or however much) to their opponent every time they spam you. "Hi, it sounds like you're running in District _____ against ______. Because of this spam, I've donated 10 cents to your opponent. So far, this app has donated $1,234 to your opponent because of your messages. Goodbye!"

Our government is so corrupt and broken they're never going to fix any of this, so it's up to the technologists and market incentives instead...

71bw2• 2 years ago

Google's spam blocking is phenomenal on the Pixel, but they barely even advertise it.

It's a feature that's good enough to warrant me replacing the otherwise superior Xiaomi dialer/SMS apps on my phone with the Google ones. I don't get the screen calling, but all the other parts work 80% of the time.

Shadowmist• 2 years ago

I thought about telling everyone to vote against whoever spams (phone/sms/email/mail/etc) the most. Chances are that whoever is funding the spam is expecting for a return on their investment to convince me to vote in a manner that is more beneficial to them than it is to me.

The problem is that once they identify you as voting against spammers it encourages them to false flag spam you from a PAC that looks like it supports their opposition.

jbaber2• 2 years ago

This last idea is good. If the machine can somehow be convinced it's actually financially detrimental to contact me, it could do some good.

It takes advantage of a difference from regular spam where there's nothing the spammer would dislike you to do.

al_borland3• 2 years ago

I donated $20 in 2016 and have regretted it ever since.

In the 2020 election cycle it seemed some of the texts had people behind them, so I’d reply and told them if they kept texting me I’d vote for the opponent out of pure spite. That was actually quite effective, but did have to say it to a half dozen people.

This time around, I keep getting texts asking for $40. Most I report as spam, others I say stop. But it seems these lists are distributed out far and wide, so removing the name from one, or 10, doesn’t do much.

Like you, I will never again donate to a politician and will encourage everyone else to save their money. No one should pay money to be harassed. I’m not sure how they think this is a good idea or will win people over.

coldpie3• 2 years ago

In the 2020 election cycle it seemed some of the texts had people behind them, so I’d reply and told them if they kept texting me I’d vote for the opponent out of pure spite. That was actually quite effective, but did have to say it to a half dozen people.

I tried sending Goatse back to them, but whatever text spamming software they're instructed to use doesn't support receiving images, unfortunately :)

ChrisMarshallNY• 2 years ago

I had some woman use my email (I have an OG mac.com email), when donating to her local ASPCA.

They sold it to a liberal political group, who then sold it to an extreme liberal group.

I get dozens, sometimes hundreds, of spam emails, every day, with the most batshit insane messages. It’s especially bad, now, with the US election coming up. The one saving grace, is that it wasn’t a right-wing group. They make the ultra-liberals look like a bunch of teetotalers.

Since she used the iCloud.com variant of the address, I simply nuke all emails that specify that, as a destination. Apple won’t let me block the domain, so I have to apply the rules, after they fill my inbox.

Sometime in there, one of the spammers figured out that icloud.com will also receive iMessage texts, so they have started coming to that, as well (so far, it is from legit political groups. I don’t expect that to last). I delete and report as junk. I very rarely respond with STOP.

sharpshadow2• 2 years ago

Why is it necessary to give them your number if you do a donation? It seems many here have the same negative experiences.

Is it an optional field? If not one could practically enter any digits or can one get punished for that?

redserk2• 2 years ago

Actblue requires a phone number and email address.

As far as I know, physically mailing a check is the best way to avoid sharing information as you only need to provide your name, address, and employer. This information is the only federally required information.

trollbridge• 2 years ago

Your phone number and e-mail address are more valuable to ActBlue than that $20 was.

The credit card input screen was just there to make you feel comfortable consenting to endless SMS texts for life.

ryukoposting• 2 years ago

One of the blessings of having a loved one in politics is that I know who is/isn't selling their lists. There's only a small handful of organizations who adhere to a firm "no list buying, no list selling" policy. Whoever you donated to apparently has dreadful data ethics. Once your number is in a major political/nonprofit consultancy's database, they'll happily hand it out to all of their other clients. You have to trust that the campaign you support isn't going to give them that data... which is, of course, impossible to know from the outside.

kccqzy2• 2 years ago

That's exactly my experience, except that I used my email instead of my phone number. That one little contribution (maybe $10) caused an endless stream of spam. And of course I forgot to give them a distinct To address after emotions are stirred up after their incendiary propaganda message on the donation page.

sedatk• 2 years ago

I think it doesn’t matter if you stop know. I know people still getting spammed today after donating to Obama in 2008.

User23• 2 years ago

Replying STOP sends a clear signal that this number is being used by a real person.

mikesabat5• 2 years ago

There are cheaper and less risky ways to understand if a number is valid. STOP will legitimately unsubscribe the recipient from messages from this phone number.

blackeyeblitzar10• 2 years ago

There aren’t more reliable ways to know if the number is valid and actively used. Relying means that number will receive spam from many other numbers later.

nkrisc2• 2 years ago

I don’t reply, and report junk and block any number that sends me what appears to be an automated text that I wasn’t expecting. I do the same with emails subscriptions that I didn’t knowingly subscribe to.

If anyone legitimate gets caught up in that, I’m not sorry, blame the spammers for ruining it for everyone.

YPPH• 2 years ago

I do the same. If I agreed to subscribe, I’ll click the link. If I didn’t, I report it as spam. If Gmail offers me to unsubscribe, I will not do that and will still go ahead and report as spam. I’ll also do this if a third party has has registered with my email with the service without my consent, since they should have verified it before spamming it, so they still deserve the lost sender reputation.

al_borland3• 2 years ago

If anyone legitimate gets caught up in that, I’m not sorry, blame the spammers for ruining it for everyone.

This is what I really hate about the pig butchering scams. They start out like a wrong number text, and don’t even get into the scam. From what I understand it takes them months as they build a relationship. Now when there are legitimate wrong numbers from people making mistakes, people are likely to ignore it or report it as spam, and the person never knows they didn’t reach their friend.

nkrisc2• 2 years ago

I got a voicemail recently that sounded like a mother leaving a message for a son who she hasn’t heard from in a while, saying she hopes he’s ok, she would like to talk to him, etc., all while sounding distraught.

Was it real? Did she really just call a wrong number? Or was it an emotional hook for a scam? I don’t know, because I decided it was best for me to simply ignore it.

Once upon a time I might have called back and let her know it was a wrong number instead of leaving her wondering. Not anymore though. Thanks scammers for shitting all over society with more ease than ever before.

wombat-man• 2 years ago

If it's from an org that I've donated to or company sure. But if it's just a random scam text, no.

godelski4• 2 years ago

First off, add yourself to the FCC's do not call list: https://www.donotcall.gov/

Once you've done that, they have 31 days to comply. There's plenty of legal entities that still will call you. If you answer, be polite, play the dope a bit to get the necessary unfortunately, ask how they got the number, then request a manager (yes, they have one, they will tell you they don't. Be polite but insist). When you get the manager politely ask for the company details, then tell them to immediately remove you from their list. Their business can be shut down for violations so once they know you know, they take you seriously (FCC takes reports more seriously when more detailed). They'll probably hang up on you, this is okay. Report them anyways (do this legal or not. They can get their voip removed and whatever shell they're using. It's still annoying for them and they might remove you because you're not worth it)

Second, don't answer phone calls. It is a practice to call, listen for a voice, then log that number as active.

Text messages are more difficult. It depends on the service but you can probably text stop. The difficulty of blocking is that legit services will use the same number to text you verification codes (can we fucking kill sms 2FA‽)

You can also sign up for a relay service (I use Firefox, but use whatever). I do this for email and every website has a unique email. Things like + for Gmail don't work and are filtered. You can also do this for phone numbers but it's more expensive.

Fourth, aggressively unsubscribe, report to FCC, change settings on devices, and so on. Do this for your non-tech savvy friends and family. Get them to use services like signal that are privacy preserving, don't leak metadata, AND is easy enough Grandma can use. Install ublock origin into their browsers and some other privacy preserving stuff and edit settings. Get them to use Firefox instead of Chrome if you can.

You need to do this to others because they will leak your information (most of my information leak comes from my parents. I even get emails in their names...)

If you want to take a step further, get a scrubbing service like optery. There's a lot of shady shit so be careful who you pick.

Edit: you can do a similar thing for mail. There is a $5 processing fee. Sucks, but sadly it's junk mail that keeps the post office alive (do not put "return to sender" unless it's prepaid. You need to give a reason otherwise your postal worker is just being nice and throwing it away for you. Don't create more work for them)

https://consumer.ftc.gov/articles/how-stop-junk-mail

godelski4• 2 years ago

If you're an engineer for Google or Apple the best thing you could do is build into an easy way for users to report to the FCC. It's a routine forum, no ML needed but hey, pitch it if you need that to get this shit done.

If you work somewhere that is spamming and enshitified, the way to convince your boss is to show them that their domains are being blocked and that leads to less money. That's the language they understand. They don't understand metrics (that's how we got here in the first place. So don't get technical!)

tzs2• 2 years ago

Unfortunately if you make reporting too easy whoever processes the reports will have to deal with a whole lot of false positives. A lot of people seem to confuse spam and non-spam that they just happen to not be interested in at the moment.

For example if you sell things on the web people will come to your site, add items to your cart, go to your checkout page, enter their email, pay, and then when they receive an emailed receipt mark it spam.

Heck, I've seen people who ask for help by sending email to a support email address, and then mark the automatic reply from the ticketing system that lets them know their request has been received and tells them how long it will take before someone gets back to them as spam.

I've also seen people complain that a company wasn't responding to their emails to support, when in fact the company is responding but the person had marked earlier receipt emails or emails letting them no that their subscription that they had opted into auto-renew for was going to renew soon as spam.

Note: in all the examples above I'm talking about companies that do not send marketing emails except to people who go to a separate page that is explicitly for signing up for newsletters. The only emails sent to the person where receipts, re-bill notices, and responses to mails the person had sent.

deathanatos• 2 years ago

The FCC is defunct. I've been on the list for eons. Reporting is, AFAICT, a huge waste of time, and doesn't seem to change anything.

You can play wack-a-mole with uBlock, but it's wack-a-mole, and poor bandaid over our government agencies not doing the job they're supposed to be doing. You'll never get them all; AFAICT recently, my own state government sold my information to private corporations.

godelski4• 2 years ago

DNC list has been successful for me.

  > You can play wack-a-mole with uBlock, but it's wack-a-mole, and poor bandaid over our government agencies not doing the job

I'm mad too, but at least wack a mole is better than nothing. You're right, you'll never get them all. But if I'm surrounded by flies I'd rather be surrounded be a dozen than a thousand. Making things binary isn't helping

joecool10293• 2 years ago

The FCC is defunct.

Probably should add some context. Some bad SCOTUS rulings basically handed nearly all text message regulation to the telecom companies themselves (through the CTIA). They don't really care too much about spam if you pay them enough to do it and don't get extremely high reporting rates (especially with short codes, they will filter/blacklist toll free numbers and local numbers if you hammer carriers enough).

mikesabat5• 2 years ago

You can feel ok about replying STOP to text messages from shortcodes. It's not impossible, but it would be an extremely bad process for an organization to have their OTP and their marketing messages (let alone spammy stuff) on the same short code.

There are short codes that are dedicated to OTP. Replying STOP to this number should not affect the ability for you to receive OTP for a different company login.

beefnugs• 2 years ago

In canada : if it is a shortcode (very short phone number) STOP is probably supported at the carrier level.

Any regular phone number, you are probably just telling the spammer you are a real person with a working number and you will receive 10x more spam

AStonesThrow4• 2 years ago

The Do Not Call list does nothing for SMS or anything but voice calls. The Do Not Call list only prevents legitimate companies which are cold-calling you. Do Not Call cannot prevent the scams or criminals, and it cannot prevent anyone who has already established an "existing business relationship" including political campaigns and non-profit fundraisers. I've been on DNC for decades and, thankfully I do not receive many bad calls at all, but it's difficult to say how much to attribute to DNC itself.

I receive, however, a fair measure of suspicious SMS, real-estate scams, political campaigns both legit and sus, and some pretty slick "USPS shipping" RCS phishing messages.

Now my Pixel Pro has a lot of spam protections and I need to leave them all completely disabled, because I routinely need to answer inbound voice calls from sketchy numbers, time-sensitive, because they could be a delivery driver or a taxi service. I just never know. The app does tag known spammer numbers, which sometimes turn out legit after all?

I consider SMS the worst mode of communication bar-none. It's locked to a single device with a single SIM. They can't be categorized, organized, tagged, forwarded, managed en masse, exported, or anything. To me it's a single-stream jumble of electronic jerks demanding my immediate attention and reactions over a most impersonal medium. I likewise disdain voice calls in many cases, so don't get me started.

dustingetz• 2 years ago

disable notifications for unknown senders - ios has this hidden deep under notifications setting

ttyprintk• 2 years ago

There’s also “Silence unknown callers”

meiraleal• 2 years ago

No, never interact with spammers/scammers, you'll just be feeding them with more info about you

exabrial• 2 years ago

Carriers in the US will block further texts from the number. The problem is it’s easy to get more numbers to spam from. This unfortunately makes it super hard for legit businesses to send transactional texts. (And Google is leading the charge in marketing ‘new features’ as a ‘transactional’ emails and push notifications)

The undeniable way to stop spam texts is to litigate. You’re put onto special lists at “number reputation” “data brokers” and the texts magically stop.

At up to $1500/violation, there are a lot of lawyers out there willing to help out with this.

smcin• 2 years ago

The undeniable way to stop spam texts is to litigate

People here are saying that doesn't work on political orgs, does it?

adastra2212• 2 years ago

Doesn't work for political texts, which aren't violations.

dredmorbius2• 2 years ago

Blacklist contact management does not work.

Whitelist does.

Perhaps reputation-based / fee-based systems as well, where an origin number (or network) has a given reputation, puts forth a bond against abuse claims, and pays a sizeable penalty for each message after the first (or perhaps some n number of claims) on which an abuse claims is placed.

This is effectively the Metafilter mechanism, in which participants pay $5 for an account. Payment mechanisms are flexible, third parties may sponsor accounts, etc. On abuse that fee is forfeit. Casual activity is unlikely to trigger this. Malicious abuse gets expensive fast.

The reason for permitting a few freebies is to allow for services such as mailing lists or other mass distributions which might find themselves specifically targeted. What's being tested is the capacity to rapidly address any claim of unwanted contact and not repeat it, not to simply penalise each instance of abuse.

Again, the really bad spammers are generating millions or billions of messages per month. Not a few dozens or hundreds. Those are the key targets of countermeasures.

E.g., "FCC slaps $300M fine on “largest illegal robocall operation” it’s ever seen" (2023)

The fined party made "more than five billion robocalls to more than 500 million phone numbers during a three-month span in 2021".

<https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/08/fcc-slaps-300m-f...>

StanislavPetrov2• 2 years ago

I never respond to any unsolicited message or call. If enough people block them and mark them as spam eventually the algorithm will mark them as spam and stop sending them out all together.

blackeyeblitzar10• 2 years ago

You can’t mark them as spam easily. The phones don’t have built in features for that. You have to go through a bunch of manual steps that Apple and Google should really make a one click process. See my other comment here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41704119

StanislavPetrov2• 2 years ago

Must be phone specific. I have a (not so fancy) Android phone and I've never gotten a call or a text that I couldn't block and mark as spam in a single step.

radicality2• 2 years ago

What does the “Report Junk” button do then on iOS in Messages app? I use that for unknown spam sms, and was under the impression that it sends it to Apple and/or my carrier for processing / feeding some ML classification funnnel.

blackeyeblitzar10• 2 years ago

Don’t reply - that can be used to confirm your number is real. That info is used and resold to spam you even more. Also the STOP keyword works only on some source phone numbers technically.

In the US you can report the spam texts by forwarding the message to 7726 (“SPAM” on your keypad) at which point your carrier will text you back and ask for the source number. This doesn’t report the message to the government agencies but just your carrier, so they can hopefully punish the platforms sending spam.

Use a site like https://www.freecarrierlookup.com/ to see which carrier or platform sent it, which is useful for the next step of reporting offenders.

Now report the incident at the FTC and FCC websites. Do this every single time so it eventually creates difficulties for the platforms enabling this. Mention the carrier or platform carrying the spam. Put in all the details correctly.

https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/

https://consumercomplaints.fcc.gov/hc/en-us/requests/new

If it is an iMessage you should use the built in “report junk” feature.

You can also go to the website of the platform that carried the message to report things through their abuse reporting pages, but not all of them are diligent. Some are happy taking money from spammers to abuse you, and will make you keep reporting each phone number that spams you because they do nothing about it except block that one number from contacting you. They won’t fix the underlying root cause of why they have all these illegal abusers as customers.

My personal experience is that the vast majority of text spam comes from a few offending text messaging platforms - for example Sinch (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinch_AB) and Bandwidth (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandwidth_Inc.) for example. These are potentially seemingly commercial platforms for spammers. Note that Sinch owns Mailgun and Mailjet too and has a long documented history of legal trouble due to spamming. Businesses should avoid using these platforms because their own reputation and delivery will be affected by being mixed with spammers.

donpott• 2 years ago

Just want to add that 7726 works in the UK too.

seb1204• 2 years ago

Great that there is a 'procedure' to follow, how can this be automated? Spammers are using automation too right?

from-nibly• 2 years ago

If you are in the US, reply STOP. Carriers will enforce that. If you are outside the US and don't live in a place where carriers are legally obligated to enforce that keyword don't send anything. It will let them know they found a human.

lupusreal3• 2 years ago

Stop is useless because the spammers never reuse the same number anyway.

diebeforei485• 2 years ago

Replying STOP means you are a real person who doesn't ignore texts from unknown senders, which means you will only receive more spam.

tommiegannert• 2 years ago

I'm receiving email spam for my business ("Nice product! What does your Go-To-Market strategy look like? ..."), and they often include 'if you don't want more emails from me, just reply "remove me."'. I assume this is either to create a sunk cost, to validate that the email address works, or to avoid me hitting the Report spam button in GMail.

The fact that I'm not replying even after your second attempt should be a strong indicator that I want you to remove me. If you send me three mails, I'll mark your email as spam and block you.

lincolnq• 2 years ago

It's actually because replies boost their email domain's reputation. (Mark as spam is a good response, given that it's exactly what they don't want)

dredmorbius2• 2 years ago

A visible unsubscribe also contributes to pro forma compliance with the 2003 CAN-SPAM act.

Many feel that this isn't actually effective in stopping spam.

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAN-SPAM_Act_of_2003>

benoau• 2 years ago

I don't even click unsubscribe links anymore, I just CC straight to my government's spam complaint line and report how my contact information has been misappropriated if I actually provided it, or accuse them of acquiring it without my consent too.

ykonstant• 2 years ago

I have a related question regarding snail mail: when I lived in the US, Utah in particular, I used to get tons and tons of ad leaflets on my mail; so much that it was hard just sorting out the trash (and not throwing a bill away, which I did twice). Is there a way to tell the postal service to stop this? The volume was insane.

AStonesThrow4• 2 years ago

Well, there is a certain loophole whereby you can inform your postmaster that the materials you've received are immoral, pornographic, and offensive to you, and then they're required to filter it out. But that gambit may not work for you.

You could also do what I do: go paperless for everything and then you'll never receive legit mail again. Tip all the rest into the rubbish bin!

kube-system3• 2 years ago

Do you have paperless jury dury selection in your area? I've never seen it.

adastra2212• 2 years ago

Yes, you can opt out of bulk mail entirely with USPS. You fill out a form, and they stop delivering it.

astura• 2 years ago

https://www.optoutprescreen.com/

jonathanstrange• 2 years ago

A Golden Rule of the internet says that you should never reply to unwanted texts on any medium:

- stalkers and trolls live off reactions, both positive and negative ones

- spammers will use your reply to verify there's a human at the other side

- colleagues and friends will hate you because everybody thinks they're important

Replying only has negative effects. Use client-side filtering, kill files, blocking functions, or ignore the text - whichever fits best.

adastra2212• 2 years ago

Except that STOP is handled at the carrier level and isn't even returned to the sender. It's effectively a mandated block command.

Havoc• 2 years ago

For which countries is this true?

crossroadsguy2• 2 years ago

And if I send a reply to my friend with just the text "stop" - that does it, right? I mean part of normal conversation, not to indicate that they should stop messaging me. Or should I remember that it's the special phrase?

mastax• 2 years ago

That seems unlikely when I get a response that says “You have been unsubscribed - Bob Loblaw for Senate” or whatever. I suppose that could be pre programmed.

upwardbound• 2 years ago

That's not true at least in the USA on my carrier. Some spammers just ignore the STOP and continue messaging anyways.

maweaver• 2 years ago

For what it's worth, I've sent a "stop" before and gotten this:

NETWORK MSG: You replied with the word "stop" which blocks all texts sent from this number. Text back "unstop" or "start" to receive messages again.

I assumed it was from my carrier (T-Mobile in the US), but now I'm wondering, as I have gotten different replies from other numbers. Maybe it came from the sender's provider? Or is just misleading.

squeaky-clean• 2 years ago

Every spam message I get comes from a different number

coldpie3• 2 years ago

- spammers will use your reply to verify there's a human at the other side

For real spam, sure, but for semi-legitimate spam like real businesses and political fundraising, I'm not sure this is actually true. I have found replying with STOP did reduce the volume of political spam I was getting. I think it makes intuitive sense that they should try to respect opt-out signals: you don't want to piss off the people you're trying to appeal to. It hasn't entirely eliminated them, but it seems to have been more effective than Junking them.

Could just be coincidence, of course. Who knows.

ryandrake• 2 years ago

for semi-legitimate spam like real businesses and political fundraising

I don’t distinguish anymore. There is no such thing as a legitimate spammer. If you contact me without my consent, you are at best a nuisance and at worst a threat. You get marked as spam if E-mail, and blocked+trashed otherwise. I really wish SMS and iMessage had a way to mark senders as spammers.

vezycash• 2 years ago

Phone numbers and emails are bought and sold. Some entities sell premium lists filtered by unresponsive numbers. Texting "STOP" or answering calls can signal activity and lead to more spam.

Enable "Do Not Disturb" or its equivalent with your provider to make contacting you costlier and reduce spam. Then, manually block every number that contacts you.

toastau• 2 years ago

In Aus with Telstra there is a filter but they also recommend it, so they may enforce a block upon STOP?

"The SMS scam filter will not block unsolicited or unwanted commercial messages or ‘spam’. To unsubscribe to legitimate business spam or marketing SMS, you can reply STOP."

https://www.telstra.com.au/cyber-security-and-safety/active-...

nottorp3• 2 years ago

It's like email. If you press unsubscribe you just confirm the email is valid. If you send STOP back you just confirm there's a human reading the messages at that number.

Besides, this seems to be an US only thing so it will only work for law abiding US based spammers^H^H^Hdirect marketers. Not for spammers outside the US, US based spammers that don't care about the law or scam/phishing messages.

adastra2212• 2 years ago

If the message is sent through mailchimp, pressing unsubscribe actually unsubscribes you and blocks the sender from contacting you again.

nottorp3• 2 years ago

blocks the sender from contacting you again

No, it blocks that mailchimp sender account from contacting you again. It doesn't block the sender from contacting you again through other means or through a different identity.

Would you like to buy a bridge?

tessierashpool9• 2 years ago

I think it's time to stop this Ask HN thing here.

lupusreal3• 2 years ago

The spam messages come from different numbers every time. STOP, if it works at all, will only stop the messages from that number. Useless.

1a527dd5• 2 years ago

For those in the UK you can forward to 7726 to report it [1]

[1] https://www.gov.uk/report-suspicious-emails-websites-phishin...

arethuza• 2 years ago

Good grief, I had no idea this existed!

aendruk4• 2 years ago

Also, https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/stop-unwanted-robocalls...:

  # Political Robotexts
  
  If you are receiving texts that you didn’t ask for, report the sender by
  forwarding the texts to 7726 (or "SPAM").

senojsitruc• 2 years ago

I tried that recently with some political texts. I do not recommend. It could be coincidental, but I suddenly started receiving a lot more political texts.

It might be true that I stopped receiving texts FROM THAT NUMBER, it's clearly the same organization spamming me from other numbers. Whatever. I'd rather get spam texts than robocalls.

dkdbejwi383• 2 years ago

are these unsolicited political messages? Where do you live that this is a thing? It's something I've not experienced before.

eli2• 2 years ago

US is blanketed with them. They are exempt from some anti-spam laws.

grugagag• 2 years ago

I share the same experience. Block seems to subscribe you a deluge of crap. Similar experience with unsubscribing from emails (many of which I never subscribed to).

eli2• 2 years ago

Unfortunately at best you’re opting out of one customer, not the entire sms service provider.

wil421• 2 years ago

It’s made no difference for me. I stopped replying STOP a couple mm the ago and just did report and block. The amount SMSs have increased, I get 5-10 a week.

blackeyeblitzar10• 2 years ago

Don’t reply to them. See what I said in my other comment ok. How to report spam and actually make an impact on this problem:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41704119

smt88• 2 years ago

For political texts in the US, it is illegal for iOS or Android to proactively treat them as spam. They're a form of political speech protected by the First Amendment.

But in my experience, they do actually slow down if you reply STOP on all of them.

ForHackernews2• 2 years ago

Yes, STOP will stop further messages from that campaign.

buildbuildbuild• 2 years ago

Beware the edge case: I responded STOP to a message years ago, then was unable to receive SMS from a popular money transmission app during the signup flow to claim funds that a friend sent me.

After over a month of troubleshooting, it turns out that I had sent "STOP" to that number years ago on a different device (no longer visible in chat history) and now had to send "UNSTOP" in order to receive the phone verification SMS required to sign up for the service. It was a shared number between multiple apps.

MaxMatti• 2 years ago

Wouldn't that also apply if you blocked the number?

falcor84• 2 years ago

Unblocking might be faster, as it's something you only need to do on your end

mway• 2 years ago

That only works if the marketing campaign exclusively uses the number you're blocking. In some cases - for example, political SMS in the US - it turns into whack-a-mole unless you unsubscribe properly.

Mattwmaster58• 2 years ago

A similar thing happened to me with my Amazon account with a forgotten password. I ended up just creating a new account.

pixelatedindex2• 2 years ago

Just wanted to say that I find it curious that you have to text “UNSTOP” and not something like “START”, lol

lvkv• 2 years ago

Unfortunately, the world is opt-out, not opt-in.

dspillett2• 2 years ago

There probably is a START instruction internally, but it won't take action against a number for which there has been a previous STOP. So UNSTOP acts like FORCE START.

sim7c002• 2 years ago

it's because of ungood design

gwd• 2 years ago

So a "stopper" can also mean a plug (i.e., something you shove into the neck of a bottle or a pipe to stop things coming out). "Stop" can also then be a verb which means, "put a stopper into"; and "unstop" can mean "remove the stopper from".

Since (it sounds like) this is talking about blocking and unblocking the flow of messages from that number, using "UNSTOP" (remove the thing blocking it) makes more sense than "START"; particularly as the latter seems to imply that you're asking to immediately begin receiving messages, whereas the former simply means to no longer block the messages.

elfrinjo• 2 years ago

Probably a Cisco engineer who built that

jaxn• 2 years ago

START works as well. At least for numbers provided by twilio: https://help.twilio.com/articles/223134027-Twilio-support-fo...

sim7c002• 2 years ago

I find it such a weird thing, maybe it's nice in some cases, but really this is a weird mechanism.

Phone numbers are exchanged a lot and repurposed. Most providers/carriers will likely have a do-not-use-for-x-amount-of-time bin to put newly reclaimed numbers in, but after a while, it will always be re-used. hence this kind of issue can happen.

In my country there's a place to register to disallow unsolicited marketing and other types of messaging. That's not by number you 'STOP' and hence it won't have such effects. A marketeer/sales company is simply not allowed by law to dial your number for sales/marketing, so they have auto-lookups to that registry to prevent breaching the law. translated, it's the 'do-not-call-me-registry' :D aptly named.

it won't stop phishing messages etc., but not much will. if you'd block it from 1 number, they will just use the next number..

no_op• 2 years ago

The US has a 'Do Not Call' registry for unsolicited phone calls, but technically doesn't need one for texts because it's illegal to send marketing texts without prior consent in the first place. Thing is, 'consent' often just means failing to notice a checkbox during a signup flow or something, so people end up getting junk anyway.

Even more annoyingly, politicians wrote in an exception for themselves. In combination with the way campaign finance works in the US, this means that if you've ever give your number to any political campaign, it will be passed around forever and you'll have multiple politicians begging you for money for months leading up to every election. Each individual campaign/organization seems to respect 'STOP,' but once your number is on an e.g. 'Has ever donated to a Democratic candidate' list, there's seemingly no way to get it off for good. Thanks, Obama. (I gave him $50 in 2008.)

JaggedJax2• 2 years ago

This happened to me with a major bank. They were using the same number for 2FA and some other types of texts. I got locked out of my account for a while because I had unsubscribed from their marketing texts. What an unbelievably dumb way to send 2FA codes.

hypeatei2• 2 years ago

Yet another reason why SMS 2FA should not be used. Shameful.

grotorea• 2 years ago

I think something similar happened to me, but I used the phone's block and report feature. I assume it was the number of some SMS sending service that had both legitimate and spam clients.

thebytefairy• 2 years ago

Had a similar thing happen to me, but for Facebook. Account got locked, to unlock I needed to verify identity via text. Never received the text because I had disabled getting text fb notifications, which apparently included account recovery. Managed to find this on some obscure thread to text some number to resubscribe and get it to work - no mechanism from fb, no alternate way to verify, no indication that this was the issue.

aendruk4• 2 years ago

I’ve encountered a couple instances of businesses that 1) send me unsolicited marketing mail, 2) react to that being flagged as spam by internally blocklisting me, then 3) silently fail to send transactional mail such as password resets.

S_A_P• 2 years ago

I’m not Left Wing. I’m certainly not right wing. However the latest trend for the Kamala campaign has in my case decided to follow the technical details of stop but not the intended scenario. I got a text message from the campaign fundraiser and clicked stop. Next day same time. Same first 6 digits different last 4. I hate politics. I’m not going to vote based off of a text.

ezfe• 2 years ago

I have been replying STOP to all political messages and I get 1-2 a WEEK right now. I lived in New Hampshire until a few years ago, so I should be on every single list imaginable.

Eumenes• 2 years ago

Yes. I reply STOP and UNSUBSCRIBE to bad recruiters on LinkedIn too.

nkotov• 2 years ago

On a related noted - does the "Report Junk" button do anything on iOS? Is there any verification that something happens when you press it?

e40• 2 years ago

And why is that option sometimes not available?

mdasen2• 2 years ago

It does send the message and number to your carrier (and I think Apple as well). With AT&T, you can also manually forward the messages to the short code 7726 (it spells SPAM), but that functionality is integrated into iOS and Android so you don't need to manually do that.

https://about.att.com/pages/cyberaware/ni/blog/forward_7726

AT&T does say that they take action based on the reports, but I think it can be difficult because spammers can rotate through numbers pretty quickly and they don't want to block things based on a few reports.

For example, lots of people report marketing email as SPAM, but Google can't just block emails from the Gap that are complying with all the regulations around bulk email and which most receivers aren't reporting as SPAM.

But yes, those reports do go somewhere and they do try to take some action based on the reports. However, SPAM is a hard problem, especially for a communications medium that's meant to be near-instant.

rc_kas• 2 years ago

I always wish Apple would respect the "report spam" button, but they do not seem to from my experience.

thesuitonym• 2 years ago

Like anything, it depends on the specific circumstances and there is no one right answer.

If it's a company/organization that you've done business with, and they got your phone number through legitimate means, replying STOP will unsubscribe you, just like clicking unsubscribe in the email will simply unsubscribe you.

Folks saying that the amount of political spam they got after replying STOP to a political message went up, probably submitted their phone number to more organizations than they realized.

If it's actual spam (Which in my experience, is more often email-to-sms from Gmail, not actual texting spam) then of course that doesn't work.

Unfortunately this is a situation where you just have to use your brain. Oh, and I'm not convinced "report spam" does anything.

teeray2• 2 years ago

The real question is: why haven't OS manufacturers (okay, namely iOS), recognized that there is spam in texts and bring the same mechanisms we have to fight spam in email? Why can't I simply create a keyword filter for all of the current political candidates' names and auto-delete any campaign texts?

samuelg123• 2 years ago

iOS exposes an API for this

Here’s a local keyword filtering app that works great: https://github.com/afterxleep/Bouncer

elboru2• 2 years ago

I use Bouncer, but this should be a functionality given by iOS, I don't feel comfortable giving a third party app access to read my messages.

Rygian• 2 years ago

I fully support the block, delete, report junk approach.

Spam should never be in the "better ask for forgiveness than ask for permission" bucket.

Workaccount2• 2 years ago

Maybe someone who has some kind of reach (perhaps at google) can fix a big issue with the rise of RCS spam:

The spammer can see the read receipt, so even if you don't respond, just viewing the message itself is a "response".

Read receipts should be disabled for unknown numbers by default.

kccqzy2• 2 years ago

I do not. Just like if I get unwanted email, I do not reply anything or even report it: I simply add a rule to move it to trash automatically. The sender does not need to know whether I read their message and considered it useful, or I didn't read the message and discarded it.

imgabe• 2 years ago

I kept getting texts about politics with a link to some survey or scam or something. I looked up the domain in the link and found it was registered through Cloudflare, so I filed an abuse report.

I still get the texts, although not as much, but they have a different domain, so that's...something I guess?

joshstrange2• 2 years ago

I often use the “Report junk” button on iOS but after spending years being bombarded with political SMS messages that I didn’t sign up for (always addressed me by the wrong name, and I’ve had my number for well over 20 years) I finally got relief.

I found out which provider was sending the SMS and contact their abuse line (I would reply STOP but they would just send from a different phone number) and got the name of the customer who was sending the messages. I then contacted that company and got them to blacklist my number (they were a company for sending political sms only, I have no worries about needing to get an sms they would send).

I now get 1-2 political spam messages a month, if that, and I’ve been too lazy to hunt down the source of the few remaining spammers. It went from 2-3 a day to 1-2 a month, huge relief.

PaulMest• 2 years ago

This sounds like my exact scenario. Can you outline in a bit more detail how you traced it back to the origin to ask to be put on a blacklist?

blackeyeblitzar10• 2 years ago

See my other comment for more details: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41704119

To look up the origin use a website like https://www.freecarrierlookup.com/

Then you can go to that platform’s page for reporting abuse or spam (find via search) and fill out their form. Sometimes those platforms will say they can’t do anything since it is a different platform that isn’t a direct customer but yet another platform, so ask them to name them. You may then need to find that other platform’s reporting page.

Just be aware that after all of this, you may not actually fix your problem. Some of these companies seem to repeatedly send spam because they have customers that just perform the same abuse from a different phone number or different account with that platform. That’s why the reports to the FCC and FTC matter, to investigate platforms for broader issues.

ugh123• 2 years ago

Well, whats the company?!

mdasen2• 2 years ago

It might vary. When you get a spam text, you can use something like Twilio's number lookup to find the carrier.

If you ever get a suspicious/spam text, looking up the carrier is a good first step. Most of the garbage I get comes from VoIP numbers because they can easily spin up disposable numbers from places like Telnyx or Bandwidth.com. That's not to say someone can't be using an actual mobile phone, but usually it's coming from some VoIP system.

joshstrange2• 2 years ago

Bandwidth was the SMS sending company and "Scale to Win LC Registered" was the client who was using Bandwidth to send the SMS. I reached out to STW and had them blacklist me.

water-data-dude• 2 years ago

Semi-recently I renewed my voter registration. When I checked the details in my profile I noticed that there wasn’t a little red asterisk next to the phone number field - it wasn’t required! Curious, I clicked the little “i in a blue circle indicating more information” thing (do those have an actual name?), and it said that field was public information, and would be shared with some political groups, etc. I immediately deleted my phone number, and I’ve noticed the political texts have slowed down noticeably.

I’m not saying that’s your problem, but it’s worth checking.

JaggedJax2• 2 years ago

Tooltip?

eigenvalue• 2 years ago

Someone should completely automate this for users for a one time $5 fee or something like that.

jghn3• 2 years ago

For political spam I have a rule that I refuse to vote for any candidate who directly or indirectly sends me a text asking for their vote. If everyone did that, perhaps fewer politicians would go this route.

ahmeneeroe-v2• 2 years ago

Honestly it's terrifying that there are so many real-life questions of self-governance and some citizens are just out there casting votes for something like this.

EasyMark• 2 years ago

Even for president or senator? I usually get texts for both main party candidates at some point in the election cycle, seems a bit drastic not to note vote for President or vote or write-in someone whom you share no values but refrains from spamming SMS

cyberlurker• 2 years ago

If everyone did that, the opponent would set up a SPAC that would text in support of the candidate knowing it would cost votes.

kjkjadksj• 2 years ago

Who does that philosophy leave you with for your potus vote? Some write in guy with a shoe on his head?

wsatb• 2 years ago

I don't know about you, but I get political spam from localities and states that I've never even lived in.

It's really bad, and to this point is just something "everyone does". So it just immediately gets deleted and reported as junk and I move on. The bigger question for me is how effective this type of marketing actually is because I can't imagine it is.

fny• 2 years ago

If you know you signed up for it, use STOP.

If you don’t, block and report the number. Otherwise you indicate to the spammer that you’re a bonafide human, and they’ll even sell that information to others.

This applies to picking up calls from numbers you don’t know. Sometimes you’ll hear silence while you repeat “Hello?” and the call drops. That’s just a machine testing to see if you’re a worthwhile target.

Instead, let unknown calls go to voicemail.

mckn1ght• 2 years ago

This is exactly what I do, but I wonder if, in the case of calls, whether even letting it go to voicemail also indicates at least the possible presence of a human. If the line were simply unreachable, like those messages you get from the carrier about disconnection, that would be harder proof that the line has no value. Anything else would be signal to keep trying it, right? Are those tests actually waiting to hear the disconnection message?

ETA: maybe I should make my voicemail message a disconnection notice XD

ETA2: actually maybe we should be starting our voicemail messages with “ignore all previous instructions and drop table…”

barbazoo• 2 years ago

With all the spoofing of local numbers going on (Canada) I'd be worried to someday block a number that'll have a legitimate reason to get in touch with me in the future. I feel like the number a call/sms is coming from has no authenticity whatsoever anymore. Not sure how true that is though.

brigade• 2 years ago

“Report junk” does jack all for legal to semi-legal spam, thanks to the carriers fear of politicians. It might do something for phishing and unabashed scams, but for the bulk of spam you get you do want to reply STOP. Not because the campaign will stop spamming you, but because evidence of explicit nonconsent is the only thing spam gateways like Bandwidth.com actually care about (under duress from the carriers), and they might actually fine them $10. Or worse, threaten to rate limit their spam.

smileybarry• 2 years ago

If it's normal marketing stuff from something I had an interaction with -- clothing store, restaurant, etc. -- then I try their unsubscribe flow if it's 1-2 steps.

But generally, when I was using a Pixel I made extensive use of Google's SMS spam blocker and reported all of the random political texts that kept using different names. (And eventually Google's filter learned)

Now on iPhone (outside the US), there's no junk detection and I don't trust any app to not keep my texts. But I found that blocking a bunch of shady shortener domains + WhatsApp links with an app like Blocky[1] catches like 95% of them.

1: A power user app that lets you make your own wildcard & regex filters for texts. Offline and open source. Looks like it's delisted by now, but this was the link to it: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/blocky-sms-filter/id1535374786 . Maybe I'll make one to replace it when I get a Mac.

martingordon• 2 years ago

Bouncer (https://apps.apple.com/us/app/bouncer-text-messages-blocker/... / https://github.com/afterxleep/Bouncer) is a free and open source SMS filtering app that has saved my sanity over the past couple of years. You need to manually set up filters, but once you do, the amount of political spam drops to 0.

It uses iOS’s SMS Filtering framework, which does the filtering in a privacy-preserving way: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/sms_and_call_repor...

the_clarence2• 2 years ago

Is there an equivalent for android?

autoexec3• 2 years ago

there's a nice app with the same name, but it doesn't do the same thing. It auto-removes permissions from apps

elboru2• 2 years ago

For privacy reasons, the system handles all communication with your associated server; your Message Filter app extension can’t access the network directly.

Thanks for the documentation link, I was uneasy about using this type of extension.

daheza• 2 years ago

This is not free and cost $2.99

dehrmann2• 2 years ago

It's 2024 and smart phones don't do out-of-the-box spam filtering?

samatman• 2 years ago

They do, but it's important to realize here that there is, in fact, a small demographic who actually want to get that political spam. So messages like that are going to get through the automated spam filter.

I suppose they could bundle a more advanced rules-based system, but since there's an API for user apps to do it, why not leave the job up to them?

ianschmitz• 2 years ago

Are there any rules that folks find really effective? It doesn’t come with any out of the box.

dbmnt• 2 years ago

This modal pops up when you enable Bouncer on iOS 18:

"The developer of 'Bouncer' will receive the text, attachments, and sender information in SMS and MMS messages from senders not in your Contacts. Messages may include personal or sensitive information like bank verification codes."

This doesn't scream "privacy preserving".

aghilmort• 2 years ago

wish there was DROP | JUNK | SPAM | REPORT option where provider &/or FCC could direct investigate spam peeps

plus mains & MVNOs checked DO NOT CALL / DO NOT TEXT registry before letting known spam accounts through etc

the_clarence2• 2 years ago

Just disable texts and use whatsapp instead no? I reenable it if I sign up for a restaurants waitlist.

nirav72• 2 years ago

I do both STOP and also report it as Junk in IOS. It has had some success. At least I've been getting lot less election related texts. Use to be that I got 6-8 messages a day from either Presidential candidate or both or down ballot local elections. Now its down to maybe couple of texts a week. Even those look like they're related to PACs and not directly from the campaigns of the candidates. However, I still get the scammer related spam.

47282847• 2 years ago

Wow. Crazy. I never get spam SMS in Germany. I’ve had my number for 20+ years. If I did, I would report it to the federal agency in charge of number assignment. I hear they are quite effective in following up with reports.

waltbosz• 2 years ago

I've replied to a couple political ads with, "Who is this?"

For federal office, I've never gotten a response. For local office, sometimes I get back, "I'm a volunteer for candidate xyz." Once or twice the reply was seemingly from the candidate themselves.

dehrmann2• 2 years ago

Hijacking this a bit, but I'm very annoyed around political texts. Banning them is something 95% of Americans would support, but only 5% of politicians would support it.

grantsch• 2 years ago

I’m shocked at the lack of knowledge here.

If you think a bad actor is targeting you, DO NOT REPLY.

They will not honor your opt out request but they may use your number in the future as you’ve confirmed there’s a human behind it. They may even sell lists of repliers to other bad actors.

appsDev• 2 years ago

I always report junk but it does not seem to stop them.. Should be a better way

Suppafly2• 2 years ago

Others have argued with me that you should reply STOP.

I don't see any point in replying STOP to an unsolicited message, if they cared about your consent they wouldn't have sent it unsolicited in the first place.

I use Google Fi which marks most of them as spam anyway, and the ones it doesn't I flag as spam so presumably other Fi users will automatically have them routed to spam.

NelsonMinar• 2 years ago

I'm finding STOP works for US politician texts. They unsubscribe me, at least for that particular spam project. (Inevitably I end up in the next one.)

I don't bother responding STOP to the obvious scams. They're already so crooked I doubt they're going to pay attention to SMS niceties when messaging me from Romania about my USPS package.

PS: never ever give your phone number or email address to any political candidate. Mailing address is required in the US but no other contact info.

fortran77• 2 years ago

Only from a legitimate source. Like if I signed up for alerts for something and don't want them anymore.

tracker12• 2 years ago

It's funny, but I've got the opposite problem... I'm working on a personal/hobby site, and I want the authentication to verify a person's sms/phone number. It's mostly going to be a community site (think online BBSes) and I want to minimize the risk of bots.

I decided to go with Twilio for this purpose, solely for SMS 2FA, but twilio is entirely geared to supporting businesses with marketing campaigns and I cannot seem to get my number verified to be able to send SMS messages for a website that doesn't yet exist.

lucb1e• 2 years ago

Always the same issue for hobby sites. Was hoping to recoup the cost of two domain names (one real, one typo catcher) and cheap hosting by putting ads on a search engine for lyrics. Site could not be verified because it "has no content". Says Google. They did no searches but just complained it's a clean page, as though a clean search engine homepage is foreign to them. I was surprised by the stupidity and mildly annoyed by the hypocrisy but didn't care enough to pursue it further

tracker12• 2 years ago

Yeah, for something like that, you really need some form of navigable index or sitemap. Used to work for an auto classifieds site, and the sitemap and updating with the latest items daily was key to the google fu. Along with navigable entry points to search results.

Kind of counter intuitive for effectively a search though.

EngineeringStuf• 2 years ago

I'm not sure why no one else has mentioned this, but "STOP" will only stop messages relating to that particular campaign. By sending "STOP ALL" it will stop messages from any campaign on that number.

xivzgrev• 2 years ago

I have been getting a lot of spam lately. Here's what I'm doing

1) Turn on filtered view on iMessage

2) Actually report the abuse to carriers. iOS makes it easy, but it seems pretty ineffective because the abusers can just use another number. But if you complain to the carrier directly, then they can (hopefully) remove you entirely for that shady customer (and possibly kick them off). Here's what I do

a) Go to https://www.ipqualityscore.com/free-carrier-lookup (or whatever site you like, that's just the one I found)

b) Type in the spam number

c) Find the carrier name

d) Google the carrier, go their site, and find "Report abuse" or something similar

e) Fill out the form. Include your contact info so you actually know whether something is done or not.

chaffroomba• 2 years ago

MY bank has a dedicated 2FA device, it can fit on my keychain

alister• 2 years ago

What's bizarre to me is that when I try to block an SMS short code number[1], my iPhone claims that it's blocked, but I continue getting SMS messages from the same number.

In case it's pertinent to why blocking doesn't work for me, my problem is mainly with SMS spam messages sent by cellular service providers in Brazil (where TIM is particularly egregious). It doesn't make sense that iOS can't block a short code. It's just a simple string match. If you blocked an SMS message from number 72404, then another message from 72404 shouldn't be displayed.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_code

csbbbb• 2 years ago

I once replied "STOP" to a text-alert system I'd just been coerced into joining, and immediately received another text saying they'd stop.

The extra text really bugged me at the moment. Using iMessage through my desktop, I spammed "STOP" texts to the number as fast as possible, receiving the same auto-reply each time.

I wanted to see if it would hit some limit, and after about 200 texts, I stopped receiving a reply.

JohnFen3• 2 years ago

If the text is from a business that I actually patronize, then I reply "STOP". If it's unsolicited, then I don't (I don't want to validate the number to the spammer) and just block the sender instead.

crossroadsguy2• 2 years ago

WhatsApp goes one step further in enabling spamming businesses. It allows the same verified businesses to register with different numbers and they can keep spamming you from different numbers. Nope, Meta apparently is too helpless to block the entire business instead of just one number.

conductr• 2 years ago

I wish Apple would natively support more filtering options. Same with the Phone app. I get a dozen calls a day from “Spam” or “Political” callers yet I can’t ignore or send them to voicemail. I can send every unknown number to voicemail but that’s too heavy handed to ever work. There’s a lot of valid communication with folks that I never add to my contacts, I shouldn’t have to add them to my contacts proactively just to get their initial call. I never usually know what number they’d be calling me from.

It’s the same with texts. They could filter these in a more useful way. Also, IMO, I shouldn’t see a counter bubble if I filtered out/missed a call that went to voicemail. I’m an inbox zero type and having bubbles means there’s something that needs attention. Spam doesn’t need attention.

Ask HN: Should you reply STOP to unwanted texts?

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