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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?

#281

Post by hypeatei »

JaggedJax wrote: post #274
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.

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

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

#282

Post by NelsonMinar »

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.

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

#284

Post by janalsncm »

dragontamer wrote: post #36
mikesabat wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks... that seems really labor intensive.

It's done with slave labor. It's called pig butchering. You kidnap people, hold them in Cambodia or whatever (lots of locations where local criminal gangs rule) so the locals don't bother checking for literally kidnapped slaves. If police stop by, pay them off and make up a story about debts and punishment. Then you use the slaves to scam others in pig butchering scams. If the slaves refuse, you beat them until they…

Just to clarify the terminology, pig butchering refers to the scam to steal money from fake romantic partners. The SE Asian kidnapping/slavery shops that run pig butchering scams are referred to as fraud factories.

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

#285

Post by ianschmitz »

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…

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

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

#286

Post by janalsncm »

FredPret wrote: post #191
dotancohen wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Local authorities are involved. Sounds like the only outside initiative that will help is Seal Team 6.

According to Wikipedia it seems like China arrested a few of them. It’s a fairly big concern for them since Chinese citizens are often the victims of these foreign “business opportunities”. They will warn you if you’re going to those areas.

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

#287

Post by jpadkins »

hypeatei wrote: post #281
JaggedJax wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

What is a better 2FA channel?

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

#288

Post by tracker1 »

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.

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

#290

Post by ChuckMcM »

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…

My wife had someone do sign up for a bank account with my wife's gmail address. She told the bank they got it wrong, and they went away for a bit and then they re-signed up AGAIN. So she told the bank to close the account. It didn't re-occur after that.

A number of elderly folks have had this issue as well. I'm really at a loss on how to fix it, some times there are bad actors but generally it seems folks are clueless and the signup flow doesn't adequately account for this.

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