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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?

#271

Post by autoexec »

AStonesThrow wrote: post #28
chatmasta wrote: post #2

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

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 addi…

> 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.

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

#272

Post by sodality2 »

elboru wrote: post #233
samuelg123 wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It doesn't give the app access to read your messages. The MessageFilter extension that actually handles filtering cannot communicate with any other part of the code nor the network.

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/sms_and_call_repor...

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

#273

Post by dehrmann »

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…

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

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

#274

Post by JaggedJax »

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…

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.

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

#275

Post by Suppafly »

> 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.

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

#276

Post by Suppafly »

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, it will be passed around forever and you'll have multiple politicians begging you for money for months leading up to every election

They really should learn to not do that, my carrier routes most of those to spam already and the few that it doesn't, I mark as spam, so presumably they'll start getting routed to spam for other people with the same carrier.

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

#277

Post by samatman »

dehrmann wrote: post #273
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…

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

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?

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

#278

Post by JaggedJax »

water-data-dude wrote: post #227
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…

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 immediate…

Tooltip?

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

#279

Post by giancarlostoro »

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…

Is the email in question something along the lines of firstnamelastname at gmail? I'm guessing your email address is a really common name that someone else keeps forgetting how their email actually deviates, or someone typos writing theirs.

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

#280

Post by DidYaWipe »

radicality wrote: post #66
DidYaWipe wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Isn’t it case sensitive? At least I always assumed it was.

Valid question, but I've tried capitals too. Check the image now. Oddly enough, Rite-Aid changed their message to mixed case, but this time did confirm the opt-out (which was requested with "STOP").

But then they continued spamming three weeks after saying they wouldn't. Pathetic.

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