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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?

#231

Post by Scoundreller »

iamthepieman wrote: post #213
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…

Even worse if someone else signs up somehow using your contact info. I got signed up (via email thankfully) for a political party in another country and no amount of "mark as spam", unsubscribe or replying would get me off the list. Eventually I just had to create a filter that dumps those messages in the trash. It must be something with non-U.S. English speaking countries because I get numerous semi-spam messages in…

Some times I get genuine ones (like a hotel reservation) for someone somewhere that’s also confused about their name.

I’d be happy to help but half the time it’s from a No-Reply email address and that shuts the door on as much effort as I’m willing to supply.

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

#232

Post by martingordon »

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...

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

#233

Post by elboru »

samuelg123 wrote: post #189
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

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.

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

#234

Post by DominoTree »

mingus88 wrote: post #24
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.

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

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.

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

#235

Post by eigenvalue »

joshstrange wrote: post #216

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…

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

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

#237

Post by mdasen »

nkotov wrote: post #172

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

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.

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

#238

Post by the_clarence »

martingordon wrote: post #232

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://develope…

Is there an equivalent for android?

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

#239

Post by toast0 »

no_op wrote: post #186
sim7c00 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> this means that if you've ever give your number to any political campaign

This is campaign finance reform in action. Giving money is not worth it, because you'll be hassled. Gets the peoples' money out of politics. QED.

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