Frustratingly they will send from new numbers each time, so just 'unsubscribing' from one will not really do anything. They will use websites/domains that don't respond to anything unless they have the path in the text message too. It's maddening. Here in Ohio I am getting nearly 100 a day recently. I would like to block unknown numbers, but I have kids and I certainly don't want to miss an emergency message.
bombcar · 2026-10-26 20:40:06 UTC
These and the loan calls are making the medium useless
We're going to have to go to double-opt-in just to communicate.
Gigachad · 2026-10-26 21:18:07 UTC
I send any calls that aren’t in my contact list direct to voicemail and then read the live transcription to decide if I’ll pick up
lastofus · 2026-10-26 21:20:35 UTC
Loan calls have filled out my voicemail inbox to full. I get anywhere from 1-5 a day. I've considered disconnecting my phone service at this point.
kotaKat · 2026-10-27 11:43:27 UTC
I need a tool to mass-dial back the toll-free numbers they tell you to call back on. I wonder how many inbound calls their trunk can hold at once waiting for an agent and what their pay-per-minute inbound rate is. I'm sure it'd be easy to start making them pay.
ProllyInfamous · 2026-10-27 10:49:37 UTC
I no longer own a cell phone.
My landline does not ring.
Stopped using email almost a decade ago.
If anybody needs to get in touch with me, they physically have to show up (or write a letter).
----
This is seemingly "impossible" for most people to attempt, but is worthwhile. May I encourage anybody reading this to step away from phones/emails for just 24 hours, to start.
esikich · 2026-10-26 20:41:02 UTC
I've had my phone number for 20 years and I get maybe one or two a month. Are you guys reading or responding to them? I just archive them when I see them. I don't know what I'm doing right, but it's just never been a problem for me and I'm not sure why. I'm not particularly careful about hiding my number and have the typical grocery store rewards cards and whatnot.
ericbarrett · 2026-10-26 20:45:26 UTC
Did you ever provide your phone number at voter registration? I made this mistake once and got added to dozens of text lists, Democratic and Republican. Never had a problem from the usual leaks.
esikich · 2026-10-26 20:47:29 UTC
Yes and those are really the only texts I get, as a matter of fact. Various polls.
LooseMarmoset · 2026-10-26 20:54:23 UTC
I have never provided my phone number at voter registration. In any case, all the texts to me are marked with "Hello Louella". I have also been "Brenda".
I am not a Louella or a Brenda, more of a "Joe" or "Frank".
I am quite sure that ActBlue just creates a list of names, then create a wardial list and assign those names to a number.
Asking them to stop just confirms your number to work. And yes, it's ActBlue because they have specifically identified themselves as such more than once.
brigade · 2026-10-26 23:46:43 UTC
You know those data brokers and skip tracers like Acxiom and Epsilon that merge all the government databases like property records or USPS change of address notifications with private databases like all the contact lists every random app wants you to upload?
They probably did a fuzzy merge and your number (or a number typo'd to yours) got associated with some random old lady.
That's how I got on the lists of all the scummy PACs targeting elderly voters that Adam Bonica called out recently. I only figured it out because the cash for homes cold contacts trying to lowball his house will actually respond.
mmcclure · 2026-10-26 20:51:27 UTC
I don't know what happened, but this got INTENSELY worse for me in the last ~6 months. I never respond to them and mark as spam and move on, but I get multiple calls and texts from unknown numbers every day. Sometimes it's the "hey, I'm sorry to hear about that thing that happened to you" kind of bait, but lately a vast majority of them are trying to offer me business funds or loans or whatever.
I have no idea if my number made its way onto new lists or if the problem just got worse in general, but it's making my phone borderline unusable. I miss any calls from legitimate unknown numbers because of it (delivery people, etc). I've also had my phone number for > 20 years at this point and I can't stand the thought of changing it.
Ensorceled · 2026-10-26 20:52:54 UTC
I've had my phone number for more than 20 years and I routinely get 2 or 3 a day.
You're lucky...
jerf · 2026-10-26 20:53:03 UTC
It depends on what you get picked up by. My ancient email address picks up all kinds of spam. I'm not sure where the Korean comes from at all. Nor am I sure why this particular woodworker thinks I am certain to buy their woodworking plans on the 842nd email when the first 841 haven't worked. I am a rather classical nerd on this point... not completely incompetent when it comes to home repair, but certainly not doing woodworking for fun on the weekends, and have no idea what signal I showed at any point that convinced someone the contrary might be true.
And then my wife has a completely different spray of spam. The amusing thing to me is that for both of us, while some of it is clearly a matter of what we're doing, she also has weird random stuff on those occasions I am tasked to find what happened to some email, and it's completely different weird random stuff.
I don't know what I did, but this election I've also been getting hammered by spam texts. I hadn't before. Not only that, it is as the author of this piece mentions, rather widely targeted. Messages that are clearly sent from the presumption that I agree with their politics despite very much not doing so... you know, the scare texts where they send "If you don't donate to us immediately the opponent is going to DO X IMMEDIATELY" and you're all like, my gosh, we should be so lucky that X would actually happen immediately but no, that's not actually going to happen. Clearly completely mistargeted. Which leads me to think even the ones I nominally wouldn't hate could well just be random luck too. And for me at least, this was a single change... from nothing last election to every single side and every shuckster trying to push poll me from every direction at once.
drivers99 · 2026-10-26 20:57:01 UTC
Have you ever donated to a candidate?
smallmancontrov · 2026-10-26 21:00:53 UTC
My text inbox went into nuclear meltdown shortly after giving my number in a donation to a local charity. I hear that political donations have the same effect, so I haven't done any of those, but in any case there doesn't seem to be any political will to punish these bad actors so better filters are probably the ticket. "Don't donate to charity/politics" is probably not a solution we want to collectively promote.
JohnMakin · 2026-10-26 20:41:12 UTC
If you reply STOP, you just let them know you read their text and it's a number that will respond with an actual person behind it. I would not reply to it. It's very unlikely to do anything but make the problem worse.
ericbarrett · 2026-10-26 20:44:02 UTC
I have replied STOP a lot and the political texts do, in fact, stop - at least from that particular number (see my other comment for a rant about this). Of course if you do this to a scammer it is as you say.
JohnMakin · 2026-10-26 20:44:39 UTC
You'll just end up on another list for the next election cycle. It's marketers - no one is forcing them to respect STOP replies, and a STOP reply is just another data point.
dv_dt · 2026-10-26 20:49:20 UTC
Not even the next cycle, as far as I can tell if you say stop or unsubscribe, the political spam mailing list system adds a new candidate to the ~8-10 candidates they keep you loaded with
It's so bizarre, to get political texts via SMS. Here in Europe, I have got 0 (zero) political texts in my life.
JohnMakin · 2026-10-26 20:51:19 UTC
I am not even really in a place with any close or important races and I'm getting 10+ a day, as a data point for you.
didgetmaster · 2026-10-26 21:01:57 UTC
I wonder if 'STOP or I will vote for your opponent' might work. Then again, if that worked, you might just start receiving messages asking you to vote for their opponent instead.
brigade · 2026-10-26 22:10:52 UTC
STOP to a 10DLC number should block further texts from that specific number at a carrier level, regardless of whether the campaign honors its 10DLC requirements. At least, until it’s recycled to a new campaign.
pluralmonad · 2026-10-26 20:45:16 UTC
I tell my friends and family to never use "unsubscribe" links unless they have a close relationship with the sender. How folks decided directing people to click links in spam email is beyond me.
Sayrus · 2026-10-26 20:50:30 UTC
GMail and many other web clients do the unsubscribe request for you if List-Unsubscribe is present. That doesn't leak your information but still shows that you care and is signal for spam.
Ensorceled · 2026-10-26 20:50:57 UTC
Gmail will helpfully suggest unsubscribing from obvious spam that contains an unsubscribe link ...
kotaKat · 2026-10-27 11:40:10 UTC
Except then it doesn't shitcan it to the spam folder. It archives it in All Mail.
There's no "Unsubscribe and report as spam", just "unsubscribe" and "report spam".
ASalazarMX · 2026-10-27 19:18:53 UTC
You only unsubscribe from legit senders, never click on a true spam unsubscribe link.
If it's a regular email that you vindicatively want to classify as spam, do that and don't unsubscribe. It will go directly to your spam folder in the future, and it will hurt a tiny bit their standing with Google.
solyin · 2026-10-26 20:56:18 UTC
What jurisdiction are you in? Legit companies respect unsubscribe links eg Eventbrite because there's actual fines associated with not respecting unsubscribes. Also, buy a domain name and use per-vendor emails with a salt. Eventbrite@solyin.com is guessable by spammers, eventbrite_1243@solyin.com is not. So then you have easy signal for what's definitely spam.
marssaxman · 2026-10-26 20:49:24 UTC
After I once made the mistake of donating money to a political campaign, I actually was able to free myself from the torrent of spam by replying END and STOP over and over. It took months, but the messages did stop.
Someone managed to connect my phone number to my voter registration during my recent move, so the spam is back. This time, I am replying END or STOP and then blocking the number & reporting spam, just in case that creates more friction for them.
bink · 2026-10-26 20:57:20 UTC
Did the deluge stop because you replied "STOP" or simply because the election period was over? If it took several months I'd assume it was the latter.
marssaxman · 2026-10-26 21:01:53 UTC
The spam continued long after that particular election was over. I don't remember how long it took to clean it up, exactly, just that each campaign who got my number did in fact respect the END/STOP request, and I was eventually able to get ahead of the viral spread.
saghm · 2026-10-26 20:58:20 UTC
I got a text from a political party recently (not one of the major ones, just trying to get me to put in a vote for the same candidate that a third party nominated as well, after I had already mailed in my ballot) that said to send STOP to stop receiving messages or SKIP to "opt out entirely". I still have no clue what the distinction is supposed to be between those.
elevation · 2026-10-26 20:58:46 UTC
> then blocking the number & reporting spam
I think it's also helpful to be prompt if you'd like to help others; A campaign will use e.g. twilio numbers leased for a matter of hour, then release it. If you wait too long to report spam, you damage the number's reputation without actually punishing the hyperactive spammer.
eastbound · 2026-10-26 21:33:35 UTC
Isn't Twilio complicit? and isn't it deserved that random Twilio customers, who are funding an illegal organization, get banned? If there is no consequence, Twilio will continue. I'd happily fund a campaign to drive Twilio to bankruptcy.
plorkyeran · 2026-10-26 22:14:08 UTC
If twilio does not want its numbers to be marked as spam then it needs to do a better job of not being used to send spam.
subscribed · 2026-10-27 13:32:45 UTC
Twilio is complicit so it rightly affects the number reputation.
volkk · 2026-10-26 21:06:01 UTC
So funny how fairly annoying it was to sign up for a phone number for a chatbot for my company going through the 10DLC campaign verification, being rejected like 3 times because I kept missing something and yet...none of it clearly really matters.
mrandish · 2026-10-26 21:17:27 UTC
I think you got lucky the first time. Traditional political candidate campaigns and mainstream parties are supposed to comply with some FEC regs about respecting unsub replies (I think it's tied to getting broad access lists and maybe reduced rates for campaigns), however a LOT of texts and robo-calls (whether supporting candidates or initiatives) are now funded by PACs who seem to have no issue using spammer SIM farms and AFAIC are under no regs.
Since there's no way to tell PAC texts from actual candidate-funded texts, and the PACs seem to now be the vast majority, I always hit the checkbox to block and report as SPAM to my telco. Not that it'll help much but if it's an actual candidate, the telcos whitelist them anyway (because of course politicians passed a law that requires them to), and if it's a PAC maybe it'll burn their SIM farm number pool a little faster, costing them more.
If you're on Android, I highly recommend: https://github.com/aj3423/SpamBlocker. The UX is a little obtuse to set up the first time (ask your LLM) but once set up it works great.
bombcar · 2026-10-26 21:40:28 UTC
The secret they use is that the company with the list NEVER sends anything, it simply sells the list to a campaign or PAC or whomever, and THAT group DOES remove you, but the moment a new campaign or PAC or whomever springs up, they buy the same list again.
This is why every campaign is a new legal entity each time around.
mrandish · 2026-10-26 22:13:40 UTC
Indeed, My 90 year-old, deeply religious mother sent a televangelist $10 one time. A year later when she was in the hospital for a few weeks. I picked up her mail once a week and quickly found out I had to bring a large sack for one week of mail. For every actual bill she got, there were over a hundred pieces of physical spam mail from every kind of religious and political cause, candidate and prophet imaginable - usually in large four-color, glossy envelopes.
It's not just offshore call center con artists preying on the elderly. There's a huge, highly profitable, legal-but-scummy onshore industry too. It was obvious that 'nice Reverend on TV' sold her out to anyone who'd pay - and then they sold it and so on... Even though I'm an atheist, these assholes make me wish there was actually a hell full of fire and brimstone awaiting them.
fmajid · 2026-10-27 11:36:08 UTC
The word you are looking for is “simony”
bradknowles · 2026-10-27 04:03:50 UTC
I use NoMoRobo Max for this stuff. For what it is, it works pretty well, IMO.
Sadly, each time they use a different number, so my list of blocked numbers is huge and getting more massive by the day. Sooner or later, I will have blocked every possible phone number in existence.
mrandish · 2026-10-27 17:21:04 UTC
SpamBlocker lets you put numbers into groups like those in your contacts, those you've ever called, and those in your area code or prefix. Then each group is tested against a content whitelist and blacklist based on words, length, formatting, even Regex. And it's not binary, each list hit has a numeric weight and when a text falls below a certain score without being 'saved' by any 'always keep' whitelist terms (like the name of my HMO, my wife's name, etc) it gets either silenced, reduced to vibrate-only or trashed.
Last time I checked NoMo nor anything else has that level of granularity. All the other spam blocker tools prioritize "one-click simple" which means all their scoring is generic and opaque. At most they let users add binary black and whitelist terms. I haven't seen any that let users weight their own terms.
dualvariable · 2026-10-26 22:59:42 UTC
i've been taking to responding "fuck off" instead of "stop" and then blocking and reporting.
they do at least enough sentiment analysis so that "fuck off" behaves like "stop" and they respond that they're removing you from their list and won't contact you again.
radicality · 2026-10-26 20:52:04 UTC
I forget where, but I remember reading somewhere about how STOP is meant to actually be handled at the carrier level and do something to not allow future messages at all from the sender? Though maybe I’m misremembering?
AugurCognito · 2026-10-26 21:03:15 UTC
At least in my experience, it's enforced at the sender/platform level. I can confirm that from working with Twilio and Amazon SNS. They suppress messages to opted-out recipients. Though the exact implementation varies by provider. For example supported keywords might be different(we have our internal list of opted out keywords).
winternett · 2026-10-26 20:57:21 UTC
I've found a lot of the traffic may be originating from resume sites..
The minute I unpublished my phone number from job recruiting sites, my spam calls declined by 60-70%. Apparently these career sites don't make enough money of job connections alone.
I now just ask for an email as a first point of contact from potential recruiters.
reaperducer · 2026-10-26 21:05:41 UTC
If you reply STOP, you just let them know you read their text and it's a number that will respond with an actual person behind it.
You're thinking about e-mail unsubscribe links.
It's my understanding that, in the United States anyway, if you reply STOP, the phone number is blocked at the carrier level.
fierycatnet · 2026-10-26 21:15:24 UTC
Christ... on the opposite end.. I'm in sales. I wish that people would just make their intentions clear. They submit a lead and I can't even get a STOP response anymore.
zerotolerance · 2026-10-26 21:16:16 UTC
Outbound is over. RIP
fierycatnet · 2026-10-26 21:19:58 UTC
This is what it feels like. I went from high performer to barely getting in touch with people in the last year and those are warm leads not cold-calling. Time for a new gig...
StanislavPetrov · 2026-10-26 21:41:17 UTC
Exactly right, better to cut your losses and just hit "block and report as spam".
Grombobulous · 2026-10-26 23:22:18 UTC
Perhaps replying with a message that looks similarly automated would work better. Make it look like they accidentally contacted GameStop chat support or something.
DANmode · 2026-10-27 00:45:48 UTC
or answer unknown callers.
This is the buried lede.
kelnos · 2026-10-27 07:54:22 UTC
No, STOP is a keyword that the carrier intercepts. The recipient never sees it. The carrier will ensure that you don't get any messages on that number anymore. The business behind the number can (sometimes, depending on the platform they're using) set a custom reply to STOP, which is what makes it seem like they're getting the message, but they aren't.
Of course, it only applies to that phone number, so they can still spam you from another number in their rotation.
webninja · 2026-10-27 20:47:00 UTC
+1 on sending “STOP”. Telecoms have detection for this keyword and punish the sender/number if two or more people send it to a number in a ~2 month period. The above comment should be the top comment.
joshuat · 2026-10-26 20:42:02 UTC
Spam calls, at least in the US, are a much more frustrating thing for me right now
Apreche · 2026-10-26 20:42:53 UTC
Screen unknown callers. Any call that comes from a number that is not in your contacts will just be sent to voicemail or blocked entirely.
fakename · 2026-10-26 21:15:57 UTC
the red icon for all the voicemails drives me nuts. I had a long wait for my kid's dr appt a few weeks ago, and I went through to delete/report spam each one. I just checked, and I have 30 new ones now :(
never had this issue on my personal android device, just my work iphone.
joshuat · 2026-10-26 22:10:29 UTC
This is better than the phone ringing, certainly, but now I just get voicemail notifications and feel the need to mark the calls/voicemails as spam.
What makes this so much more frustrating is that I work in the telephony industry, and I know the hoops brands have to jump through to make calls or send SMS/MMS. I work with TCR for brand/campaign registration, I work with NetNumber and STIR/SHAKEN cert issuance for attestation levels. All of these hurdles for us, and it seemingly makes no impact in the real world for spam filtration.
dawnerd · 2026-10-26 20:50:43 UTC
I get four per line per day and have two lines on my phone. They all follow the same script with slight variations and the voicemails are all ai that often get confused and repeat things.
jillesvangurp · 2026-10-26 22:01:28 UTC
I get a lot of those in Germany. The countries they originate from change. A few months ago it was random numbers in the US. Then it switched to the UK. The last few weeks it's from some random numbers in Germany. The numbers rotate and I never get more than one or two calls from the same number. I always block them but it seems these guys have an endless supply of random numbers to switch to. I had four of them today. I just bulk block them every few days. I don't think anyone cares.
No idea what kind of scams they are pushing but it seems very cheap and easy to abuse the system like this. I wish we could escalate this to operators and force them to deal with abusive customers properly like they clearly can't be bothered to do right now. Some countries probably have rules and regulations. Like Germany probably has. And yet, I get spam calls from German numbers on my own German number. So, clearly whatever there is, isn't working all that well.
Apreche · 2026-10-26 20:42:07 UTC
Screen unknown senders. Any text that comes from a number that is not in your contacts will be stashed away in the unknown senders bin without any notification. Problem solved.
pixl97 · 2026-10-26 20:54:50 UTC
May work for some people, not sure if it works for most.
I'd miss all kinds of texts from my doctors which seem to come from all kinds of different numbers forcing me to browse the bin anyway.
bryan0 · 2026-10-26 20:57:29 UTC
on iOS I still get badge notifications from unknown senders. I don't think there's a way to turn this off for some reason?
ericbarrett · 2026-10-26 20:42:58 UTC
I have replied STOP to many of these and it has reduced the flood, but I still get several a day. The bot's reply to "stop" is always some variant of:
> You have successfully been unsubscribed. You will not receive any more messages from this number.
"From this number" is clearly a legalese parsing of some law or regulation and the end result is that you cannot truly opt out. Infuriating.
verdverm · 2026-10-26 20:45:43 UTC
STOP has worked more for me with Dem begging texts, less so with Repub, but not completely with either. I've switched to sending them troll like messages back, which also results in the same unsubscribed message, but perhaps makes it clear I will not give money to politicians.
esikich · 2026-10-26 20:48:31 UTC
I'm pretty sure by responding you're just letting them know it's an active number. Could be wrong though.
ericbarrett · 2026-10-26 21:06:04 UTC
For commercial and political texters in the U.S. there is quite a bit of FCC regulation. For scammers, obviously that doesn't matter. Probably a sign of the times that people can't tell the difference anymore, though
alright2565 · 2026-10-26 20:58:49 UTC
I think the more reasonable explanation is that there actually are hundreds of independent entities sending this sort of political spam.
Grombobulous · 2026-10-26 23:21:07 UTC
That's exactly it. I donated to a candidate once (literally once, ever) and the party basically passes my phone number around to every PAC and campaign organization under the sun.
This stuff must be effective or else they wouldn't do it. On the other hand, it seems like a good way to discourage repeat donors. Why would I donate any money if the result is going to be endless texts and emails?
Heck, maybe they should offer a "premium donation" where you pay extra to not get on these lists, analogous to a no-ads streaming plan.
comrade1234 · 2026-10-26 20:44:14 UTC
Politicians are allowed to send spam texts, emails, phone calls. They exempted themselves from all of laws prohibiting it. Just block it.
pixl97 · 2026-10-26 20:52:25 UTC
Yep, political spam, um, isn't spam.
This year has been the worst I've ever seen. Hundreds of them so far.
BeetleB · 2026-10-26 20:44:50 UTC
I "solved" this for email years ago (as did many before me):
Any communication channel that doesn't involve a whitelist (e.g. invite/approve) will have this problem. Email. Phones. Text messages.
If you want to fix this, the protocol must ensure the recipient first agrees to communicate with you. Until they do, all messages to them will be automatically blocked.
This solution works. Yes, there are always ways to get around it, but in practice, it cuts the nonsense by well over 90%.
pixl97 · 2026-10-26 20:55:40 UTC
Eh, at least for me I'd miss all kinds of text notifications from health providers if I did that.
BeetleB · 2026-10-26 21:12:14 UTC
Nope. Just like anyone else, they get your permission to communicate, and you get their notifications.
Right now, a lot of orgs will send you a text message when you initiate business with them, and the first message always informs you how to get off their list. If you do nothing, you remain on the list. With my way, they just send a "special" message asking to connect with you. If you do nothing, you don't hear from them.
The difference between a whitelist and a blacklist (current approach) is you don't have to do the work to keep getting off people's list. They do the work to get on your list.
pixl97 · 2026-10-26 22:00:10 UTC
You're confusing permission to communicate with consistent sources they communicate from.
BeetleB · 2026-10-26 22:12:28 UTC
If this were the protocol, they'd be incentivized to:
1. Make the sources consistent
2. Separating out marketing vs "serious" sources.
carlgao · 2026-10-26 20:47:42 UTC
This was one of the reasons I switched from iPhone to Google Pixel.
Getting less spam was one of my biggest hallelujah moments after switching.
The Pixel has never (AFAICT) mistakenly marked a text as spam, although it has mistakenly declined a few legit phone calls.
It's not perfect but I am a less angry person now.
readthenotes1 · 2026-10-26 21:02:21 UTC
I have a Google Pixel phone and I have been overwhelmed with text messages related to the current election.
At least the phone calls are handled properly...
kdmoyers · 2026-10-27 09:35:05 UTC
Me as well
markkat · 2026-10-26 20:48:26 UTC
I simply want a whitelist. If you aren’t on it, you cannot text or call me.
dawnerd · 2026-10-26 20:49:30 UTC
iOS has that for calls but they still leave a notification you have to manually clear. I wish for an option to just not tell me at all.
psadri · 2026-10-26 20:50:06 UTC
I had exactly the same thought around Apple’s “report spam”. I have marked hundreds of text messages as spam. There is enough training data in there for even a dumb classifier to filter some of this stuff out. But next day, there are half a dozen more, nearly identical spam msgs sitting unread in the inbox.
I have also found that replying STOP = sign of life, your number is marked as “someone alive on the other end” and gets resold to 20 new lists.
Comments
We're going to have to go to double-opt-in just to communicate.
My landline does not ring.
Stopped using email almost a decade ago.
If anybody needs to get in touch with me, they physically have to show up (or write a letter).
----
This is seemingly "impossible" for most people to attempt, but is worthwhile. May I encourage anybody reading this to step away from phones/emails for just 24 hours, to start.
I am not a Louella or a Brenda, more of a "Joe" or "Frank".
I am quite sure that ActBlue just creates a list of names, then create a wardial list and assign those names to a number.
Asking them to stop just confirms your number to work. And yes, it's ActBlue because they have specifically identified themselves as such more than once.
They probably did a fuzzy merge and your number (or a number typo'd to yours) got associated with some random old lady.
That's how I got on the lists of all the scummy PACs targeting elderly voters that Adam Bonica called out recently. I only figured it out because the cash for homes cold contacts trying to lowball his house will actually respond.
I have no idea if my number made its way onto new lists or if the problem just got worse in general, but it's making my phone borderline unusable. I miss any calls from legitimate unknown numbers because of it (delivery people, etc). I've also had my phone number for > 20 years at this point and I can't stand the thought of changing it.
You're lucky...
And then my wife has a completely different spray of spam. The amusing thing to me is that for both of us, while some of it is clearly a matter of what we're doing, she also has weird random stuff on those occasions I am tasked to find what happened to some email, and it's completely different weird random stuff.
I don't know what I did, but this election I've also been getting hammered by spam texts. I hadn't before. Not only that, it is as the author of this piece mentions, rather widely targeted. Messages that are clearly sent from the presumption that I agree with their politics despite very much not doing so... you know, the scare texts where they send "If you don't donate to us immediately the opponent is going to DO X IMMEDIATELY" and you're all like, my gosh, we should be so lucky that X would actually happen immediately but no, that's not actually going to happen. Clearly completely mistargeted. Which leads me to think even the ones I nominally wouldn't hate could well just be random luck too. And for me at least, this was a single change... from nothing last election to every single side and every shuckster trying to push poll me from every direction at once.
There's no "Unsubscribe and report as spam", just "unsubscribe" and "report spam".
If it's a regular email that you vindicatively want to classify as spam, do that and don't unsubscribe. It will go directly to your spam folder in the future, and it will hurt a tiny bit their standing with Google.
Someone managed to connect my phone number to my voter registration during my recent move, so the spam is back. This time, I am replying END or STOP and then blocking the number & reporting spam, just in case that creates more friction for them.
I think it's also helpful to be prompt if you'd like to help others; A campaign will use e.g. twilio numbers leased for a matter of hour, then release it. If you wait too long to report spam, you damage the number's reputation without actually punishing the hyperactive spammer.
Since there's no way to tell PAC texts from actual candidate-funded texts, and the PACs seem to now be the vast majority, I always hit the checkbox to block and report as SPAM to my telco. Not that it'll help much but if it's an actual candidate, the telcos whitelist them anyway (because of course politicians passed a law that requires them to), and if it's a PAC maybe it'll burn their SIM farm number pool a little faster, costing them more.
If you're on Android, I highly recommend: https://github.com/aj3423/SpamBlocker. The UX is a little obtuse to set up the first time (ask your LLM) but once set up it works great.
This is why every campaign is a new legal entity each time around.
It's not just offshore call center con artists preying on the elderly. There's a huge, highly profitable, legal-but-scummy onshore industry too. It was obvious that 'nice Reverend on TV' sold her out to anyone who'd pay - and then they sold it and so on... Even though I'm an atheist, these assholes make me wish there was actually a hell full of fire and brimstone awaiting them.
Sadly, each time they use a different number, so my list of blocked numbers is huge and getting more massive by the day. Sooner or later, I will have blocked every possible phone number in existence.
Last time I checked NoMo nor anything else has that level of granularity. All the other spam blocker tools prioritize "one-click simple" which means all their scoring is generic and opaque. At most they let users add binary black and whitelist terms. I haven't seen any that let users weight their own terms.
they do at least enough sentiment analysis so that "fuck off" behaves like "stop" and they respond that they're removing you from their list and won't contact you again.
The minute I unpublished my phone number from job recruiting sites, my spam calls declined by 60-70%. Apparently these career sites don't make enough money of job connections alone.
I now just ask for an email as a first point of contact from potential recruiters.
You're thinking about e-mail unsubscribe links.
It's my understanding that, in the United States anyway, if you reply STOP, the phone number is blocked at the carrier level.
This is the buried lede.
Of course, it only applies to that phone number, so they can still spam you from another number in their rotation.
never had this issue on my personal android device, just my work iphone.
What makes this so much more frustrating is that I work in the telephony industry, and I know the hoops brands have to jump through to make calls or send SMS/MMS. I work with TCR for brand/campaign registration, I work with NetNumber and STIR/SHAKEN cert issuance for attestation levels. All of these hurdles for us, and it seemingly makes no impact in the real world for spam filtration.
No idea what kind of scams they are pushing but it seems very cheap and easy to abuse the system like this. I wish we could escalate this to operators and force them to deal with abusive customers properly like they clearly can't be bothered to do right now. Some countries probably have rules and regulations. Like Germany probably has. And yet, I get spam calls from German numbers on my own German number. So, clearly whatever there is, isn't working all that well.
I'd miss all kinds of texts from my doctors which seem to come from all kinds of different numbers forcing me to browse the bin anyway.
> You have successfully been unsubscribed. You will not receive any more messages from this number.
"From this number" is clearly a legalese parsing of some law or regulation and the end result is that you cannot truly opt out. Infuriating.
This stuff must be effective or else they wouldn't do it. On the other hand, it seems like a good way to discourage repeat donors. Why would I donate any money if the result is going to be endless texts and emails?
Heck, maybe they should offer a "premium donation" where you pay extra to not get on these lists, analogous to a no-ads streaming plan.
This year has been the worst I've ever seen. Hundreds of them so far.
https://blog.nawaz.org/posts/2018/Sep/solving-my-email-probl...
Any communication channel that doesn't involve a whitelist (e.g. invite/approve) will have this problem. Email. Phones. Text messages.
If you want to fix this, the protocol must ensure the recipient first agrees to communicate with you. Until they do, all messages to them will be automatically blocked.
This solution works. Yes, there are always ways to get around it, but in practice, it cuts the nonsense by well over 90%.
Right now, a lot of orgs will send you a text message when you initiate business with them, and the first message always informs you how to get off their list. If you do nothing, you remain on the list. With my way, they just send a "special" message asking to connect with you. If you do nothing, you don't hear from them.
The difference between a whitelist and a blacklist (current approach) is you don't have to do the work to keep getting off people's list. They do the work to get on your list.
1. Make the sources consistent
2. Separating out marketing vs "serious" sources.
Getting less spam was one of my biggest hallelujah moments after switching.
The Pixel has never (AFAICT) mistakenly marked a text as spam, although it has mistakenly declined a few legit phone calls.
It's not perfect but I am a less angry person now.
At least the phone calls are handled properly...
I have also found that replying STOP = sign of life, your number is marked as “someone alive on the other end” and gets resold to 20 new lists.