Comment by crazygringo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by crazygringo | Hacker News Reader

I just want to be able to sign up for a do-not-message SMS list and a do-not-spam email list, specifically for political candidates.

The past year in particular I've been getting as much as daily political fundraising SMS's but every time it's from somebody new. Random representatives from across the country. I reply "STOP" each time and that same one never messages me again, but there are literally thousands and thousands and thousands of people running for state legislatures out there...

I'm fine with Google exempting political e-mails from other commercial spam, AS LONG AS there's a setting to send them straight into the trash.

And I say this as someone who's very politically active -- but there's nothing democratically enabling about getting messages from random reps in Wyoming, Hawaii, Idaho, Virginia, none of which are places I live or can vote in.

I went back to the dumb approach of setting up keyword filters (SpamHound on iOS, which allows a Regex-similar pattern).

You’d be surprised at how much spam gets blocked by a simple “http.*” filter. Of course, I occasionally do miss messages but it’s pretty easy to check the spam folder when I’m expecting a 2FA code or something. Known contacts are never blocked so it’s never really that much of an issue.

Check out the message contents you’re receiving. I bet you’ll find a similar pattern, maybe “(vote|election).*” would suffice.

I rely on never giving out the same email address twice. Every form gets a new variant.

So if one starts blowing up with spam, it's easy to filter that out, and to know exactly who is responsible.

Is there an easy way to achieve this? I remember there being one, but the details are hazy.

Buy a domain and setup a wildcard catch all. Instructions vary by platform

Edit, duckduckgo and other services offer this as well.

I have been getting slammed with political sms messages. Had no idea such a filtering program existed

Don't forget the increasing trend of sending the politicians photo so that it shows up in your notifications.

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