361–370 of 386 posts
The extra text really bugged me at the moment. Using iMessage through my desktop, I spammed "STOP" texts to the number as fast as possible, receiving the same auto-reply each time.
I wanted to see if it would hit some limit, and after about 200 texts, I stopped receiving a reply.
If the text is from a business that I actually patronize, then I reply "STOP". If it's unsolicited, then I don't (I don't want to validate the number to the spammer) and just block the sender instead.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The law specifically exempts such texts from being covered, sadly.
Proof laws don't work.
If anything, it indicates the opposite. If laws didn't work, then lawmakers wouldn't have to bother to put exemptions in them.
If the text is from a business that I actually patronize, then I reply "STOP". If it's unsolicited, then I don't (I don't want to validate the number to the spammer) and just block the sender instead.
WhatsApp goes one step further in enabling spamming businesses. It allows the same verified businesses to register with different numbers and they can keep spamming you from different numbers. Nope, Meta apparently is too helpless to block the entire business instead of just one number.
Earlier 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…
> 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." They're basically deferring to the courts to determine reasonableness. Yikes. The lawyer dog comes to mind (a Fifth and Sixth Amendment Supreme Court case). Suspect speaks voluntarily to police until he realizes they suspect him of a crime. He stops…
Something something greatest legal minds of their generation.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unfortunately, the world is opt-out, not opt-in.
Unless you need a kidney; then we just bury perfectly good ones regularly, and let the donated ones get a bit more stale while we confirm the opt-in eleventy times.
Just kidding! It's all determined on a case-by-case basis depending on the most conservative perspective of the dominant, favored religion.
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…
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+…
On a related noted - does the "Report Junk" button do anything on iOS? Is there any verification that something happens when you press it?
Carriers in the US will block further texts from the number. The problem is it’s easy to get more numbers to spam from. This unfortunately makes it super hard for legit businesses to send transactional texts. (And Google is leading the charge in marketing ‘new features’ as a ‘transactional’ emails and push notifications) The undeniable way to stop spam texts is to litigate. You’re put onto special lists at “number re…
Whitelist does.
Perhaps reputation-based / fee-based systems as well, where an origin number (or network) has a given reputation, puts forth a bond against abuse claims, and pays a sizeable penalty for each message after the first (or perhaps some n number of claims) on which an abuse claims is placed.
This is effectively the Metafilter mechanism, in which participants pay $5 for an account. Payment mechanisms are flexible, third parties may sponsor accounts, etc. On abuse that fee is forfeit. Casual activity is unlikely to trigger this. Malicious abuse gets expensive fast.
The reason for permitting a few freebies is to allow for services such as mailing lists or other mass distributions which might find themselves specifically targeted. What's being tested is the capacity to rapidly address any claim of unwanted contact and not repeat it, not to simply penalise each instance of abuse.
Again, the really bad spammers are generating millions or billions of messages per month. Not a few dozens or hundreds. Those are the key targets of countermeasures.
E.g., "FCC slaps $300M fine on “largest illegal robocall operation” it’s ever seen" (2023)
The fined party made "more than five billion robocalls to more than 500 million phone numbers during a three-month span in 2021".
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/08/fcc-slaps-300m-f...>