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Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

I get very little phone or SMS spam. All SMS spam gets replied to with "STOP", which, for most of the SMS services, is a strike against the spammer. I've been on the Do Not Call list since it started.

Email spam is repetitive enough that the usual Thunderbird filters work. If a spam email has an unsubscribe link, I click on that and add the sender to the block list. If it doesn't have an unsubscribe link, I try to find out which service sent it and send them a notice of a CAN-SPAM law violation. The usual suspects (Mailchump, SpamGrid, etc.) do terminate accounts for that, to prevent being blocked themselves.

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> which, for most of the SMS services, is a strike against the spammer.

Huh, didn’t know that. I assumed that it was nothing more than baiting a response, verifying that the phone number is a hit.

In Twilio[1] a "STOP" reply is an automatic add to blocklist. Their user doesn't have control over how that is handled. I wouldn't be surprised if other providers have the same controls in place behind the scenes.

[1] https://help.twilio.com/articles/223134027-Twilio-support-fo...

But you still get a webhook notifying you they said stop.

So as far as telling whether it’s a legit number, the spammers still win.

I've started to get spam via iMessage lately which I assume avoids most automated scrutiny that may apply to bulk SMS. Usually in the form of "your UPS/USPS package address needs to be verified" or something.

My iMessage is configured to send read receipts, so I quickly bounce the setting before opening the message to click the "Report Junk" link (maybe it's pointless). It would be nice to mark things as spam/junk without having to open them, perhaps I will just delete them since iMessage has been a malware vector in the past.

perhaps I will just delete them since iMessage has been a malware vector in the past.

And that’s when you will discover that you’ve been wasting your time because when you delete them, you’ll get a dialog saying “…is not in your contacts” with the option to “delete and report junk”. You never needed to open the messages to begin with.

Nice, thanks! I'll go that route next time.

> which, for most of the SMS services, is a strike against the spammer

Citation needed.

All the vendors we use have STOP functionality baked in as it’s the correct way to ensure we can unsubscribe folk.

Even the FCC[1] seems to agree.

[1] - https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-24-24A1.pdf?bcs-...

Maybe the FCC should explain this to some of the political spam culprits using hefty fines, because while those folks claim they honor "STOP" they send every campaign with a different number and the "STOP" message doesn't matter because they're clearly all meant to be "one-and-done" spam campaigns.

I wish. Political ads are exempt from the national Do Not Call list as well. Laws written to benefit the writers.

Political ads/calls are exempt?! Seriously?! Shit! I didn't know that. And that explains why I get two-dozen calls per day prior to a major election. So annoying.

How do you know STOP is a strike?

Could you share some advice on finding the service if they're missing an unsubscribe link? I have been reporting these kinds of emails to their domain registrars, but if I can do more I would like to.

Are you certain that STOP counts as a strike ? For example in a service like Broadband , Twilio, or Zipwhip ?

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