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Comment by foepys | Hacker News Reader

Is that a problem worldwide or more localized to the US? I am using Signal, Threema, and WhatsApp and never received spam on any messanger, only occasionally via SMS.

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I receive more spam than legitimate messages on WhatsApp. But I also don't use it a whole lot.

I suspect that, a bit like email addresses, being very selective about who you give your "address" to is the most important bit.

Sadly, phone numbers, unlike email addresses, are such a small address space that it's possible to just message all of them.

Multiple times a week I receive WhatsApp spam. Generally it's trying to add me to a crypto group or someone trying to phish information.

The only other service/medium where I get comparable (really any) spam is SMS/email.

I've never, and I mean never, have received a spam message over iMessage.

I live 10,000km away from the US and can confirm that I get more spam on androids than when using iMessage. It wasn’t the main reason I switched back to iOS with my newest phone but it was a reason.

I've been using Android for years and I rarely receive any spam via SMS or Whatsapp. Maybe once or twice a year.

Maybe it depends on the Android vendor, but my OnePlus' "Messages" (the SMS app) automatically blocks a lot of spam messages automatically and it's quite good at it. On the contrary I have friends with iPhones who get spam/phishing messages.

Via SMS like everyone else with a mobile phone here, and especially around election dates. Apple’s done a few things recently to mitigate this and last election I reported a lot of phone numbers for spam to my carrier using a mechanism Apple built-in; so we’ll see if it starts to make a difference within a couple of years time.

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