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Comment by joshstrange | Hacker News Reader

I often use the “Report junk” button on iOS but after spending years being bombarded with political SMS messages that I didn’t sign up for (always addressed me by the wrong name, and I’ve had my number for well over 20 years) I finally got relief.

I found out which provider was sending the SMS and contact their abuse line (I would reply STOP but they would just send from a different phone number) and got the name of the customer who was sending the messages. I then contacted that company and got them to blacklist my number (they were a company for sending political sms only, I have no worries about needing to get an sms they would send).

I now get 1-2 political spam messages a month, if that, and I’ve been too lazy to hunt down the source of the few remaining spammers. It went from 2-3 a day to 1-2 a month, huge relief.

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Semi-recently I renewed my voter registration. When I checked the details in my profile I noticed that there wasn’t a little red asterisk next to the phone number field - it wasn’t required! Curious, I clicked the little “i in a blue circle indicating more information” thing (do those have an actual name?), and it said that field was public information, and would be shared with some political groups, etc. I immediately deleted my phone number, and I’ve noticed the political texts have slowed down noticeably.

I’m not saying that’s your problem, but it’s worth checking.

Tooltip?

This sounds like my exact scenario. Can you outline in a bit more detail how you traced it back to the origin to ask to be put on a blacklist?

See my other comment for more details: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41704119

To look up the origin use a website like https://www.freecarrierlookup.com/

Then you can go to that platform’s page for reporting abuse or spam (find via search) and fill out their form. Sometimes those platforms will say they can’t do anything since it is a different platform that isn’t a direct customer but yet another platform, so ask them to name them. You may then need to find that other platform’s reporting page.

Just be aware that after all of this, you may not actually fix your problem. Some of these companies seem to repeatedly send spam because they have customers that just perform the same abuse from a different phone number or different account with that platform. That’s why the reports to the FCC and FTC matter, to investigate platforms for broader issues.

For political spam I have a rule that I refuse to vote for any candidate who directly or indirectly sends me a text asking for their vote. If everyone did that, perhaps fewer politicians would go this route.

Honestly it's terrifying that there are so many real-life questions of self-governance and some citizens are just out there casting votes for something like this.

Don’t sweat it. People are fickle and make all sorts of irrational decisions.

Many super nerdy online people profess to die on various molehills. Fortunately, they don’t represent a lot of volume.

Even for president or senator? I usually get texts for both main party candidates at some point in the election cycle, seems a bit drastic not to note vote for President or vote or write-in someone whom you share no values but refrains from spamming SMS

I already fall back to write-ins a lot as I have other rules that will disqualify candidates in my book.

I absolutely refuse to vote for anyone who does this, and if it means I don't vote so be it. No exceptions.

Besides which, I never share values with the candidates for national office anyways. Nobody is willing to actually protect civil liberties any more, and I'm not going to vote for someone who will take away my freedom when it's politically expedient.

Politicians are like the ad industry (scummy)... I owe them nothing. If they choose to run, so be it, but if they spam me, they're off the ticket. Just like captcha sites.

If everyone did that, the opponent would set up a SPAC that would text in support of the candidate knowing it would cost votes.

Who does that philosophy leave you with for your potus vote? Some write in guy with a shoe on his head?

I already refuse to vote for someone I don't actually support. So yes, I often will write in candidates.

I don't know about you, but I get political spam from localities and states that I've never even lived in.

It's really bad, and to this point is just something "everyone does". So it just immediately gets deleted and reported as junk and I move on. The bigger question for me is how effective this type of marketing actually is because I can't imagine it is.

Someone should completely automate this for users for a one time $5 fee or something like that.

Well, whats the company?!

It might vary. When you get a spam text, you can use something like Twilio's number lookup to find the carrier.

If you ever get a suspicious/spam text, looking up the carrier is a good first step. Most of the garbage I get comes from VoIP numbers because they can easily spin up disposable numbers from places like Telnyx or Bandwidth.com. That's not to say someone can't be using an actual mobile phone, but usually it's coming from some VoIP system.

Bandwidth was the SMS sending company and "Scale to Win LC Registered" was the client who was using Bandwidth to send the SMS. I reached out to STW and had them blacklist me.

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