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Ask HN: Should you reply STOP to unwanted texts?

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Re: Ask HN: Should you reply STOP to unwanted texts?

#181

Post by thesuitonym »

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.

Re: Ask HN: Should you reply STOP to unwanted texts?

#182

Post by teeray »

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?

Re: Ask HN: Should you reply STOP to unwanted texts?

#183

Post by teeray »

blackeyeblitzar wrote: post #43
danny_taco wrote: post #9

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.

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

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

Re: Ask HN: Should you reply STOP to unwanted texts?

#184

Post by mastax »

adastra22 wrote: post #97
jonathanstrange wrote: post #69

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…

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

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.

Re: Ask HN: Should you reply STOP to unwanted texts?

#186

Post by no_op »

sim7c00 wrote: post #162
buildbuildbuild wrote: post #135

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 verificati…

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 marketin…

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.)

Re: Ask HN: Should you reply STOP to unwanted texts?

#187

Post by happymellon »

jeroenhd wrote: post #118
happymellon wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's a setting on Android. I don't know about iOS. Same for SMS read receipts.

Yeah I checked after writing that. They are now all disabled by default, for both Android and iOS.

Re: Ask HN: Should you reply STOP to unwanted texts?

#188

Post by nullstyle »

dotancohen wrote: post #150
otterley wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These outfits are often working under the protection of the local authorities thanks to rampant bribery.

That's why the initiative has to come from outside.

It sounds like you’ve developed a very special set of skills, Mr. Neeson.

This situation is a little more complicated than to be solved by a back and forth on the hacker news comment section.

Re: Ask HN: Should you reply STOP to unwanted texts?

#189

Post by samuelg123 »

teeray wrote: post #182

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?

iOS exposes an API for this

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

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