Ask HN: Should you reply STOP to unwanted texts?

Post by kccqzy » Tue, Oct 01, 2024, 2:35 PM UTC

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.

Post by kube-system » Tue, Oct 01, 2024, 2:37 PM UTC

fy20 wrote: post #171

danesparza wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You can verify a phone number is real and active without needing them to reply, or without someone even receiving a notification. 1) SMS supports receipt functionality, which means the sender can be notified when a message is delivered to a handset. This happens at the carrier level, so you can't turn it off. 2) SMS supports 'silent' messages which are a different message class that is not shown to users.

Post by coldpie » Tue, Oct 01, 2024, 2:40 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #200

coldpie wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - 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 yo…

> 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.

Post by JohnFen » Tue, Oct 01, 2024, 2:43 PM UTC

chias wrote: post #198

no_op wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> technically doesn't need one for texts because it's illegal to send marketing texts It is unfortunately seemingly not illegal to send me political beg-texts multiple times per day, though.

Post by kube-system » Tue, Oct 01, 2024, 2:45 PM UTC

AStonesThrow wrote: post #87

ykonstant wrote: post #65

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.

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!