Ask HN: Should you reply STOP to unwanted texts? • Hacker News Board

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

#351

Post by dbmnt » Wed, Oct 02, 2024, 2:51 AM UTC

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…

This modal pops up when you enable Bouncer on iOS 18:

"The developer of 'Bouncer' will receive the text, attachments, and sender information in SMS and MMS messages from senders not in your Contacts. Messages may include personal or sensitive information like bank verification codes."

This doesn't scream "privacy preserving".

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

#352

Post by danielhughes » Wed, Oct 02, 2024, 3:01 AM UTC

joecool1029 wrote: post #342

solardev wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that new? I tried it out for fun once and it only took a few minutes and I don't recall any major hoops. I think it's different if you're applying for a shortcode vs a regular or toll free number though. There are different regulations governing all of those.

There's only hoops to jump through if you want higher send rates from a number. The CTIA figured out a new cash grab was registering businesses as legit senders on TFA's but it doesn't promise delivery, just gets you a nice logo/name on SMS apps. Having been on the purchasing end for wholesale marketing SMS I can tell you most of sales people will suggest the 'correct' way and happily sell things that let you do it t…

Pretty sure that’s no longer the case. You need to register your “campaign” to send any SMS messages. I put campaign in quotes because the process seems to ignore the fact that people might have use cases that are unrelated to marketing.

https://help.twilio.com/articles/1260803965530

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

#353

Post by solardev » Wed, Oct 02, 2024, 3:55 AM UTC

ForHackernews wrote: post #133

solardev wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just the re-use and sharing of lists, but also the incredible Facebook-style targeting available to anyone for spamming. Anyone can sign up for something like ActionNetwork.org or NationBuilder and send out an email blast to registered voters in a particular zip code. NGP VAN is even more powerful. The whole industry is mature and super targeted like any other spammer, but mostly immune to spam regulations (…

Good. If the price of living in a democratic society with transparent voter/donor records is a few annoying emails, we should all be paying that price gladly.

I dunno if that's either necessary or sufficient... in a country with legalized bribery, billionaire presidents, SuperPACs and all sorts of dark money, I doubt that knowing Joe Citizen donated $27 is really going to save democracy.

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

#354

Post by chaffroomba » Wed, Oct 02, 2024, 4:48 AM UTC

MY bank has a dedicated 2FA device, it can fit on my keychain

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

#355

Post by beefnugs » Wed, Oct 02, 2024, 5:07 AM UTC

mikesabat wrote: post #26

godelski wrote: post #14

First off, add yourself to the FCC's do not call list: https://www.donotcall.gov/ Once you've done that, they have 31 days to comply. There's plenty of legal entities that still will call you. If you answer, be polite, play the dope a bit to get the necessary unfortunately, ask how they got the number, then request a manager (yes, they have one, they will tell you they don't. Be polite but insist). When you get the m…

You can feel ok about replying STOP to text messages from shortcodes. It's not impossible, but it would be an extremely bad process for an organization to have their OTP and their marketing messages (let alone spammy stuff) on the same short code. There are short codes that are dedicated to OTP. Replying STOP to this number should not affect the ability for you to receive OTP for a different company login.

In canada : if it is a shortcode (very short phone number) STOP is probably supported at the carrier level.

Any regular phone number, you are probably just telling the spammer you are a real person with a working number and you will receive 10x more spam

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

#356

Post by amy-petrik-214 » Wed, Oct 02, 2024, 5:13 AM UTC

aftbit wrote: post #306

bsamuels wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3. is a romance scam. pig butchering/romance scams take place over multiple months, not one texting session

Could be, yeah. I'm a bit skeptical though. This took place months ago, and the conversation ended in a pretty reasonable place, something like "nice to meet you, take care" from me. I would have expected a few more engagement attempts from her if she wanted to scam me.

Well that's part of the romance scam game, you don't want to seem too needy. The best romance scammers will play a little bit of "hard to get" and a little bit of "good cop bad cop" if you know what I mean. The aloofness that you describe here was not an accident.

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

#357

Post by Ylpertnodi » Wed, Oct 02, 2024, 5:48 AM UTC

EasyMark wrote: post #252

jghn wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For political spam I have a rule that I refuse to vote for any candidate who directly or indirectly sends me a text asking for their vote. If everyone did that, perhaps fewer politicians would go this route.

Even for president or senator? I usually get texts for both main party candidates at some point in the election cycle, seems a bit drastic not to note vote for President or vote or write-in someone whom you share no values but refrains from spamming SMS

Politicians are like the ad industry (scummy)... I owe them nothing. If they choose to run, so be it, but if they spam me, they're off the ticket. Just like captcha sites.

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

#358

Post by sambf » Wed, Oct 02, 2024, 8:41 AM UTC

solardev wrote: post #3

It kinda depends on which platform handles their bulk messages. For example, if they are messaging you through Twilio, replying with "STOP" will cause Twilio itself to opt you out of messages ( https://help.twilio.com/articles/223134027-Twilio-support-fo... ), and the sender can't disable that ( https://help.twilio.com/articles/360034798533-Getting-Starte... ). It's kinda like how Mailchimp handles unsubscriptions fo…

Worked for a company that offers marketing & transactional SMSes: our SMS provider relayed the STOPs and we were obligated to honor it, but the provider couldn't check it.

Also, the provider relayed the STOP to the last of their client that reached the number, they had no way to trace it back with 100% confidence.

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

#359

Post by dspillett » Wed, Oct 02, 2024, 9:44 AM UTC

pixelatedindex wrote: post #326

dspillett wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There probably is a START instruction internally, but it won't take action against a number for which there has been a previous STOP. So UNSTOP acts like FORCE START.

But then you can have… RESTART?

If the process is releasing a STOP (removing or soft-deleting a STOP instruction logged in the DB or some such) then whoever worked on it initially may just have not thought beyond that (especially if English wasn't their first language so unstop might not have sounded any stranger to them than restart). Once something like that is written down and others have seen it, it tends to stick.

Of course it could hav ebeen done by someone like me, who is know to give things technically-correct-but-odd names deliberately…

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

#360

Post by alister » Wed, Oct 02, 2024, 10:54 AM UTC

What's bizarre to me is that when I try to block an SMS short code number[1], my iPhone claims that it's blocked, but I continue getting SMS messages from the same number.

In case it's pertinent to why blocking doesn't work for me, my problem is mainly with SMS spam messages sent by cellular service providers in Brazil (where TIM is particularly egregious). It doesn't make sense that iOS can't block a short code. It's just a simple string match. If you blocked an SMS message from number 72404, then another message from 72404 shouldn't be displayed.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_code