Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yet another reason why SMS 2FA should not be used. Shameful.
What is a better 2FA channel?
An authenticator app or hardware MFA device.
Ask HN: Should you reply STOP to unwanted texts?
291–300 of 386 posts
Re: Ask HN: Should you reply STOP to unwanted texts?
#292Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yet another reason why SMS 2FA should not be used. Shameful.
What is a better 2FA channel?
TOTP (thing that generates the 6 numbers every 30 seconds) whether that's a dedicated device (secure but very annoying) or a TOTP app on your phone (what most people use).
Re: Ask HN: Should you reply STOP to unwanted texts?
#293Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you're an engineer for Google or Apple the best thing you could do is build into an easy way for users to report to the FCC. It's a routine forum, no ML needed but hey, pitch it if you need that to get this shit done. If you work somewhere that is spamming and enshitified, the way to convince your boss is to show them that their domains are being blocked and that leads to less money. That's the language they under…
Unfortunately if you make reporting too easy whoever processes the reports will have to deal with a whole lot of false positives. A lot of people seem to confuse spam and non-spam that they just happen to not be interested in at the moment. For example if you sell things on the web people will come to your site, add items to your cart, go to your checkout page, enter their email, pay, and then when they receive an em…
There's a lot of people, so a lot of false positives is certainly true. The question is percentage.
There's probably better ways to do things but I don't think we should just give up before we begin. Clearly spammers are abusing the systems at play and they're hard to track. So if a bunch of hay comes with your shipment of needles, it is better than getting no needles.
Though that isn't to say we shouldn't try to reduce the hay and that there aren't a lot of avenues that this can be done.
Re: Ask HN: Should you reply STOP to unwanted texts?
#294Earlier quoted context omitted.
> And in fact businesses have to regularly check for requests even like "please don't send me messages" to be compliant. That's only vaguely true. The FCC has effectively said "here's a list of words that are considered reasonable opt out words and let the courts decide what is reasonable when there is a dispute." [0] They're basically deferring to the courts to determine reasonableness. Obviously it's a good practic…
> but the courts really don't like people who don't follow the instructions If you contact me without my consent I now have to follow your instructions to stop your harassment? Nonsense.
No, this is specifically for the case of someone intentionally signing up to receive the texts first. Had they been unsolicited, the outcome would have been the exact opposite. The take away is don’t sign up for SMS spam, send obtuse opt out messages, and then expect a payday in court.
Re: Ask HN: Should you reply STOP to unwanted texts?
#295Earlier quoted context omitted.
> What I want to know is, what's the purpose of those random texts that just say something like, "How's it been?" from a number that I've never communicated with? What's the angle there? Anyone know? My understanding is that they will pretend it's a wrong number, but then make a joke or talk about some innocuous hobby and try to build up trust over weeks/months to eventually phish or scam you. I forget where I read i…
I have gotten three kinds of those: 1. Someone texting the previous owner of my number (John). I got all kinds of traffic for him, including debt collectors, friends, ex-girlfriends, employers, etc. I gather John ran into a spot of financial trouble, dropped his phone-number, and skipped town. 2. An old high-school classmate trying to find my mom found my number on one of those people search sites, probably associate…
3. is a romance scam. pig butchering/romance scams take place over multiple months, not one texting session
Re: Ask HN: Should you reply STOP to unwanted texts?
#296Re: Ask HN: Should you reply STOP to unwanted texts?
#297I 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…
This sounds like my exact scenario. Can you outline in a bit more detail how you traced it back to the origin to ask to be put on a blacklist?
See my other comment for more details:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41704119
To look up the origin use a website like https://www.freecarrierlookup.com/
Then you can go to that platform’s page for reporting abuse or spam (find via search) and fill out their form. Sometimes those platforms will say they can’t do anything since it is a different platform that isn’t a direct customer but yet another platform, so ask them to name them. You may then need to find that other platform’s reporting page.
Just be aware that after all of this, you may not actually fix your problem. Some of these companies seem to repeatedly send spam because they have customers that just perform the same abuse from a different phone number or different account with that platform. That’s why the reports to the FCC and FTC matter, to investigate platforms for broader issues.
Re: Ask HN: Should you reply STOP to unwanted texts?
#298Earlier quoted context omitted.
Don’t reply to them. See what I said in my other comment ok. How to report spam and actually make an impact on this problem: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41704119
For political texts in the US, it is illegal for iOS or Android to proactively treat them as spam. They're a form of political speech protected by the First Amendment. But in my experience, they do actually slow down if you reply STOP on all of them.
It’s not illegal for them to treat them as spam proactively. In fact, manufacturers and carriers and text messaging platforms are completely free to make the decision to block them (and some do).
It isn’t a first amendment issue either actually - it’s just that legislators lobbied for an explicit exemption in the laws passed around this (after all they wrote the text). CAN SPAM is an example.
Re: Ask HN: Should you reply STOP to unwanted texts?
#299It'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 se…
Always the same issue for hobby sites. Was hoping to recoup the cost of two domain names (one real, one typo catcher) and cheap hosting by putting ads on a search engine for lyrics. Site could not be verified because it "has no content". Says Google. They did no searches but just complained it's a clean page, as though a clean search engine homepage is foreign to them. I was surprised by the stupidity and mildly annoyed by the hypocrisy but didn't care enough to pursue it further
Re: Ask HN: Should you reply STOP to unwanted texts?
#300Earlier quoted context omitted.
Speaking mostly for the US here. The STOP keyword is mandated as unsubscribe at the carrier level (Verizon, ATT, TMo) not just the vendor level. So if you reply STOP, it's very likely that you will not receive another message from that number. This will be true for any programmatic SMS vendor. There could be smaller scale & more manual approaches, but that would be rare. There has been a big effort in the last year+…
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...
CVS sent me a spam today because I gave them my number to know a prescription was ready. STOP got a reply offering to only send status notifications. We'll see if it means anything to them.