71–80 of 207 posts
Where I work, we use Pushover ( https://pushover.net/ ) for this. A message comes in via SMS and then a handler stores it in a database then turns around, does some light filtering[0], and then sends a notification to a Pushover group. It's $5 per user per month for their teams feature, which we happily use. 0 - The handler doesn't send out via Pushover any message that contains words we're unlikely to use; Facebook…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is simply against the ToS to send spam over twilios network. Objectively this is what OP is doing. You are allowed to receive spam maybe your core business even depends on getting spam numbers or analyzes the spam for phishing links itself. You can receive and ingest it in anything you want you just can't send it over twilio yourself. Sorry this is not a design flaw this is just a bad workflow.
This is absolutely a Twilio design flaw. It's an incredibly common use case to forward text messages from one incoming line to another number that is controlled by your company, and it's impossible to tell at the point of receipt (when it's still in Twilio's network) whether it's spam or not before forwarding it on. It's the same exact thing that you might do if you have a support@example.com email address; it probab…
> Temporarily, I will re-program the system so that it does not forward text message content to my employees phone numbers. I might be reading this wrong, but it sounds like you take inbound text messages to one number and then send outbound messages with the same content to employee phone numbers. Is that right? If so, that sounds like you're SENDING the spam messages in addition to receiving them. Regardless, it so…
I have set up a few twilio accounts like this where a business number blindly forwards to the business owner's personal cell, maybe some logic for business hours and holidays. If twilio wants us to start filtering spam messages for these cases, they need to give us the API/tooling. Or let us pre-register receiving numbers through an opt-in process. I understand Twilio not wanting to be an open relay but the reported…
If they can’t update the integration with spam filtering, then it seems like they should be using COTS software.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are suggesting that a service that has no idea of what your business is should curate your data and "simply drop it"? yikes.
The are otherwise curating the data and calling it spam on the outbound, so… yes?
If the first Twilio should fix this bug in their system, if the second then they should maybe have some process of setting up employee phone numbers in their system so the shut down process does not happen. At any rate both scenarios should be common enough that they should have a process to handle that.
Support with them is significantly better but if I remember correctly pricing is around $1k/mo minimum (which was more than worth it in our case).
Best of luck to you.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have set up a few twilio accounts like this where a business number blindly forwards to the business owner's personal cell, maybe some logic for business hours and holidays. If twilio wants us to start filtering spam messages for these cases, they need to give us the API/tooling. Or let us pre-register receiving numbers through an opt-in process. I understand Twilio not wanting to be an open relay but the reported…
Yes or they could have just blocked the messaged before it hit my system. They are the ones that originally allowed the message to get to me. Then when I process it, they suspend my account.
It's probably a good idea for twillio to be more reachable to any paying customer, at least until a human employee makes the determination if the customer is a spammer.
> I should be considering bearing in mind that it would be expensive to re-write the software to work with another vendor Well, maybe next time you get somebody that implements a standard. With that kind of behavior (not letting you speak to anybody, the blocking is understandable), it's clear you shouldn't keep their services. So, you have now an opportunity to do it right, and make the next move cheaper.
There isn't a standard for these apis though
There isn't really a standard for the interactive voice processing, SIP is a standard, but it's not quite simple to use it compared to Twilio or similar APIs.
However, most of the providers in this space have fairly simple APIs, so it's like 30 minutes of work to do the integration, maybe a little more if you're also receiving SMS or if URLs are particularly hard to use in your language of choice; if you're adding yet another SMPP vendor, that's faster, if you're adding yet another GSMA SOAP vendor, it's probably longer because you'll have to figure out why your XML doesn't work even though it should. Plus whatever it takes to get the account setup. Plus however long to build a way to choose from multiple providers (this part may be a lot of work!), and however long you want to run with limited traffic to see if the new provider does better/worse/same as the old provider.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is not quite right. We aren't sending the messaged from the original number. As far as I know, that isn't really possible because we don't "own" that original number. The business case of relaying inbound text messages to an employee's phone number should be a very common one and should not warrant an account suspension.
The fact is that you are sending spam over twilios network even if it's just to your own employees. You are also saying it is not the first time it happens and you seem to have done noting to mitigate the problem at hand furthermore is it an attack vector for phishing against your company. The fact that you are not ingesting the text into another system is also a bit concerning how do you handle GDPR requests? If you…
I'm very curious. Is this a communication mistake? Like do you think I'm some big company that forwards text messages to random people?
Do you understand these are text messages being sent to one of like 3 employees at my small company? We are not generating outbound content or allowing anyone else to do so. Your question about GDPR requests makes me think maybe you have misunderstood the context.
If you have correctly understood the context, do you actually think I should have some kind of AI algorithm scanning these messages for Phishing?
I'm not sure I understand what your are suggesting or how you would have solved this problem? You would have just turned off the text message forwarding I guess?
Is that how you solve problems? You see a problem, then you destroy the thing that caused the problem, so problem solved? What do you do for a living with that type of cognitive approach? Are you an entrepreneur? Do you really run a business with that attitude? Are you en engineer? If so, when you are asked to make something work, do you just tell your boss "no" if you run into a problem that requires a creative solution? Are you a lawyer? Is your job to tell people what thing they cannot do, but not to help people do new things? That would kind of make sense...