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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?

#51

Post by joecool1029 »

deathanatos wrote: post #25
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…

The FCC is defunct. I've been on the list for eons. Reporting is, AFAICT, a huge waste of time, and doesn't seem to change anything. You can play wack-a-mole with uBlock, but it's wack-a-mole, and poor bandaid over our government agencies not doing the job they're supposed to be doing. You'll never get them all; AFAICT recently, my own state government sold my information to private corporations.

>The FCC is defunct.

Probably should add some context. Some bad SCOTUS rulings basically handed nearly all text message regulation to the telecom companies themselves (through the CTIA). They don't really care too much about spam if you pay them enough to do it and don't get extremely high reporting rates (especially with short codes, they will filter/blacklist toll free numbers and local numbers if you hammer carriers enough).

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

#52

Post by gcanyon »

mikesabat wrote: post #17
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…

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+…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLPpl2ISKTg

It's well worth the watch, but tl;dr: it's a long-con scam. They invest as long as it takes to establish a relationship with you, and then engage you to do something (crypto mostly, apparently) involving cash online. They will say they made a bunch of money, and point you at the super-easy online exchange they used. You buy the crypto, you see the crypto increase in value (because it has in the real world) so you buy more, and more and more.

The problems start when you say you want to cash out. They switch from "buy more, it's going up" to "there are fees to withdraw, just deposit another and then you'll get the withdrawal amount plus " and of course no money ever comes out.

Oliver interviews people who have lost hundreds of thousands of dollars this way, some of whom still believe that if they just toss in another it will all be resolved and they'll get their money back. It's very sad, and I'm not doing the video justice.

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

#54

Post by StanislavPetrov »

blackeyeblitzar wrote: post #41
StanislavPetrov wrote: post #37

I never respond to any unsolicited message or call. If enough people block them and mark them as spam eventually the algorithm will mark them as spam and stop sending them out all together.

You can’t mark them as spam easily. The phones don’t have built in features for that. You have to go through a bunch of manual steps that Apple and Google should really make a one click process. See my other comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41704119

Must be phone specific. I have a (not so fancy) Android phone and I've never gotten a call or a text that I couldn't block and mark as spam in a single step.

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

#55

Post by tommiegannert »

I'm receiving email spam for my business ("Nice product! What does your Go-To-Market strategy look like? ..."), and they often include 'if you don't want more emails from me, just reply "remove me."'. I assume this is either to create a sunk cost, to validate that the email address works, or to avoid me hitting the Report spam button in GMail.

The fact that I'm not replying even after your second attempt should be a strong indicator that I want you to remove me. If you send me three mails, I'll mark your email as spam and block you.

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

#56

Post by solardev »

danny_taco wrote: post #9

In my experience it doesn't do much. For example, I made the mistake of contributing to the campaign of a politician. Now I get texts from candidates all over the country. If I reply STOP to one, I just get sent more texts from another number, for another candidate in another state. I just got tired of replying with STOP after the 20th time. This just guarantees I'm never giving any money to any candidate ever again.

In a previous election cycle, I made the mistake of donating a few thousand dollars to several candidates. Since then, I get spammed through the year, and close to a major election, it's dozens of emails and phone calls and text messages every week.

Thankfully, Gmail catches 99% of the spam emails and my Pixel phone filters out spam texts and calls. It has a built-in Google Assistant mode that screens unknown callers with a robot voice picking up and asking them to describe what they're calling about. Most of the callers just hang up as soon as they hear that, and if they don't and actually say they're calling about so-and-so candidate, I just click the block button.

I tried to switch to iPhone for a few weeks (for iMessage), but the spam problem was SO bad (even with Robocaller and some SMS spam filtering app) that I switched back to Android. Google's spam blocking is phenomenal on the Pixel, but they barely even advertise it. It's an afterthought for them, but a lifesaver for me. My phone would be completely unusable without it.

----------------

In the back of my mind, I keep thinking it'd be cool to have an app that automatically looks up whoever the candidate is running against and automatically donating 10 cents (or however much) to their opponent every time they spam you. "Hi, it sounds like you're running in District _____ against ______. Because of this spam, I've donated 10 cents to your opponent. So far, this app has donated $1,234 to your opponent because of your messages. Goodbye!"

Our government is so corrupt and broken they're never going to fix any of this, so it's up to the technologists and market incentives instead...

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

#57

Post by joecool1029 »

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…

Twilio is sort of a dream for spammers, they'll just make new accounts on it and spam campaigns on those new accounts. Political organizations do it all the time, if you get on a list you're never getting off. Lookup the numbers sending to you (Twilio's own lookup tool works great for this) and it almost always comes back Twilio/Zipwhip.

I only recommend responding STOP to short codes since there's more investment and vetting on getting a short code. Carriers will intercept the request for TFN/local numbers sometimes but I don't really trust it. These numbers are all going to be spammers buying pools of numbers to churn and burn. They'll just import their list into a new account if it unsubs.

Oh and btw, it's actually easier now as a spammer to tell when numbers get burned. A few years back when the CTIA handover on regs happened (and sending costs went up) the carriers finally started to respond with the delivery status of the sent messages. Before this they didn't respond and you only knew your provider delivered the messages to the carrier, not whether the carrier delivered them to the handset.

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

#58

Post by oasisbob »

solardev wrote: post #45
mingus88 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish anyone from actblue would see this. I gave a few small donations and foolishly didn’t use a disposable email address. That was over four years ago and I’m still getting over a dozen spam emails a day from candidates I have never even heard of. Maybe there is some central actblue list I can opt out of but I don’t even think I created an account with them Never donated a penny since

Your campaign donations are a matter of public record and Actblue harvests them and repackages them to sell to political campaigns and operatives. It's a shitty business model that preys upon an unfortunate part of federal law that most donors don't know about.

Everyone shares lists.

I have a politics label in gmail that is blue/red from 2012 onwards. All the GOP emails are from poking around Romney 2012, and nothing else.

I'd say you'd be surprised on the reuse, but you shouldn't be.

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

#59

Post by latency-guy2 »

blackeyeblitzar wrote: post #43
danny_taco wrote: post #9

In my experience it doesn't do much. For example, I made the mistake of contributing to the campaign of a politician. Now I get texts from candidates all over the country. If I reply STOP to one, I just get sent more texts from another number, for another candidate in another state. I just got tired of replying with STOP after the 20th time. This just guarantees I'm never giving any money to any candidate ever again.

Note that US law has carve outs for politicians and their campaigns. They are exempt on both email and phone spam as I recall.

These people are terrorists to my email filters, what can I do to make their behavior really hurt?

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

#60

Post by [deleted] »

mingus88 wrote: post #24
danny_taco wrote: post #9

In my experience it doesn't do much. For example, I made the mistake of contributing to the campaign of a politician. Now I get texts from candidates all over the country. If I reply STOP to one, I just get sent more texts from another number, for another candidate in another state. I just got tired of replying with STOP after the 20th time. This just guarantees I'm never giving any money to any candidate ever again.

I wish anyone from actblue would see this. I gave a few small donations and foolishly didn’t use a disposable email address. That was over four years ago and I’m still getting over a dozen spam emails a day from candidates I have never even heard of. Maybe there is some central actblue list I can opt out of but I don’t even think I created an account with them Never donated a penny since

[deleted]
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