Ask HN: Should you reply STOP to unwanted texts?

Beware the edge case: I responded STOP to a message years ago, then was unable to receive SMS from a popular money transmission app during the signup flow to claim funds that a friend sent me.

After over a month of troubleshooting, it turns out that I had sent "STOP" to that number years ago on a different device (no longer visible in chat history) and now had to send "UNSTOP" in order to receive the phone verification SMS required to sign up for the service. It was a shared number between multiple apps.

It kinda depends on which platform handles their bulk messages. For example, if they are messaging you through Twilio, replying with "STOP" will cause Twilio itself to opt you out of messages (https://help.twilio.com/articles/223134027-Twilio-support-fo...), and the sender can't disable that (https://help.twilio.com/articles/360034798533-Getting-Starte...). It's kinda like how Mailchimp handles unsubscriptions for recipients, no matter what the sender wants.

However, if they're using some other carrier or rolling their own VOIP setup, etc., or sending from a toll-free number instead of a shortcode, there's no guarantee that their particular platform will honor STOP. And there's no way for you, as a recipient, to know which is which.

Generally I will reply STOP if it's something I know I signed up for but no longer want. Things I never signed up for just get reported as spam and I don't reply.

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.

A Golden Rule of the internet says that you should never reply to unwanted texts on any medium:

- stalkers and trolls live off reactions, both positive and negative ones

- spammers will use your reply to verify there's a human at the other side

- colleagues and friends will hate you because everybody thinks they're important

Replying only has negative effects. Use client-side filtering, kill files, blocking functions, or ignore the text - whichever fits best.

Bouncer (https://apps.apple.com/us/app/bouncer-text-messages-blocker/... / https://github.com/afterxleep/Bouncer) is a free and open source SMS filtering app that has saved my sanity over the past couple of years. You need to manually set up filters, but once you do, the amount of political spam drops to 0.

It uses iOS’s SMS Filtering framework, which does the filtering in a privacy-preserving way: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/sms_and_call_repor...

In my experience it doesn't do much. For example, I made the mistake of contributing to the campaign of a politician. Now I get texts from candidates all over the country. If I reply STOP to one, I just get sent more texts from another number, for another candidate in another state. I just got tired of replying with STOP after the 20th time. This just guarantees I'm never giving any money to any candidate ever again.

The real question is: why haven't OS manufacturers (okay, namely iOS), recognized that there is spam in texts and bring the same mechanisms we have to fight spam in email? Why can't I simply create a keyword filter for all of the current political candidates' names and auto-delete any campaign texts?

“Report junk” does jack all for legal to semi-legal spam, thanks to the carriers fear of politicians. It might do something for phishing and unabashed scams, but for the bulk of spam you get you do want to reply STOP. Not because the campaign will stop spamming you, but because evidence of explicit nonconsent is the only thing spam gateways like Bandwidth.com actually care about (under duress from the carriers), and they might actually fine them $10. Or worse, threaten to rate limit their spam.

For those in the UK you can forward to 7726 to report it [1]

[1] https://www.gov.uk/report-suspicious-emails-websites-phishin...

Carriers in the US will block further texts from the number. The problem is it’s easy to get more numbers to spam from. This unfortunately makes it super hard for legit businesses to send transactional texts. (And Google is leading the charge in marketing ‘new features’ as a ‘transactional’ emails and push notifications)

The undeniable way to stop spam texts is to litigate. You’re put onto special lists at “number reputation” “data brokers” and the texts magically stop.

At up to $1500/violation, there are a lot of lawyers out there willing to help out with this.

I tried that recently with some political texts. I do not recommend. It could be coincidental, but I suddenly started receiving a lot more political texts.

It might be true that I stopped receiving texts FROM THAT NUMBER, it's clearly the same organization spamming me from other numbers. Whatever. I'd rather get spam texts than robocalls.

If it's normal marketing stuff from something I had an interaction with -- clothing store, restaurant, etc. -- then I try their unsubscribe flow if it's 1-2 steps.

But generally, when I was using a Pixel I made extensive use of Google's SMS spam blocker and reported all of the random political texts that kept using different names. (And eventually Google's filter learned)

Now on iPhone (outside the US), there's no junk detection and I don't trust any app to not keep my texts. But I found that blocking a bunch of shady shortener domains + WhatsApp links with an app like Blocky[1] catches like 95% of them.

1: A power user app that lets you make your own wildcard & regex filters for texts. Offline and open source. Looks like it's delisted by now, but this was the link to it: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/blocky-sms-filter/id1535374786 . Maybe I'll make one to replace it when I get a Mac.

I've replied to a couple political ads with, "Who is this?"

For federal office, I've never gotten a response. For local office, sometimes I get back, "I'm a volunteer for candidate xyz." Once or twice the reply was seemingly from the candidate themselves.

I do not. Just like if I get unwanted email, I do not reply anything or even report it: I simply add a rule to move it to trash automatically. The sender does not need to know whether I read their message and considered it useful, or I didn't read the message and discarded it.

Phone numbers and emails are bought and sold. Some entities sell premium lists filtered by unresponsive numbers. Texting "STOP" or answering calls can signal activity and lead to more spam.

Enable "Do Not Disturb" or its equivalent with your provider to make contacting you costlier and reduce spam. Then, manually block every number that contacts you.

Maybe someone who has some kind of reach (perhaps at google) can fix a big issue with the rise of RCS spam:

The spammer can see the read receipt, so even if you don't respond, just viewing the message itself is a "response".

Read receipts should be disabled for unknown numbers by default.

I'm receiving email spam for my business ("Nice product! What does your Go-To-Market strategy look like? ..."), and they often include 'if you don't want more emails from me, just reply "remove me."'. I assume this is either to create a sunk cost, to validate that the email address works, or to avoid me hitting the Report spam button in GMail.

The fact that I'm not replying even after your second attempt should be a strong indicator that I want you to remove me. If you send me three mails, I'll mark your email as spam and block you.

It's funny, but I've got the opposite problem... I'm working on a personal/hobby site, and I want the authentication to verify a person's sms/phone number. It's mostly going to be a community site (think online BBSes) and I want to minimize the risk of bots.

I decided to go with Twilio for this purpose, solely for SMS 2FA, but twilio is entirely geared to supporting businesses with marketing campaigns and I cannot seem to get my number verified to be able to send SMS messages for a website that doesn't yet exist.

No. Reacting to any unwanted contact just moves you further into their funnel. Ideally don’t even open the text.

I'm not sure why no one else has mentioned this, but "STOP" will only stop messages relating to that particular campaign. By sending "STOP ALL" it will stop messages from any campaign on that number.

I'm finding STOP works for US politician texts. They unsubscribe me, at least for that particular spam project. (Inevitably I end up in the next one.)

I don't bother responding STOP to the obvious scams. They're already so crooked I doubt they're going to pay attention to SMS niceties when messaging me from Romania about my USPS package.

PS: never ever give your phone number or email address to any political candidate. Mailing address is required in the US but no other contact info.

I don't even click unsubscribe links anymore, I just CC straight to my government's spam complaint line and report how my contact information has been misappropriated if I actually provided it, or accuse them of acquiring it without my consent too.

Hijacking this a bit, but I'm very annoyed around political texts. Banning them is something 95% of Americans would support, but only 5% of politicians would support it.

Like anything, it depends on the specific circumstances and there is no one right answer.

If it's a company/organization that you've done business with, and they got your phone number through legitimate means, replying STOP will unsubscribe you, just like clicking unsubscribe in the email will simply unsubscribe you.

Folks saying that the amount of political spam they got after replying STOP to a political message went up, probably submitted their phone number to more organizations than they realized.

If it's actual spam (Which in my experience, is more often email-to-sms from Gmail, not actual texting spam) then of course that doesn't work.

Unfortunately this is a situation where you just have to use your brain. Oh, and I'm not convinced "report spam" does anything.

> Others have argued with me that you should reply STOP.

I don't see any point in replying STOP to an unsolicited message, if they cared about your consent they wouldn't have sent it unsolicited in the first place.

I use Google Fi which marks most of them as spam anyway, and the ones it doesn't I flag as spam so presumably other Fi users will automatically have them routed to spam.

I do both STOP and also report it as Junk in IOS. It has had some success. At least I've been getting lot less election related texts. Use to be that I got 6-8 messages a day from either Presidential candidate or both or down ballot local elections. Now its down to maybe couple of texts a week. Even those look like they're related to PACs and not directly from the campaigns of the candidates. However, I still get the scammer related spam.

In Aus with Telstra there is a filter but they also recommend it, so they may enforce a block upon STOP?

"The SMS scam filter will not block unsolicited or unwanted commercial messages or ‘spam’. To unsubscribe to legitimate business spam or marketing SMS, you can reply STOP."

https://www.telstra.com.au/cyber-security-and-safety/active-...

It's like email. If you press unsubscribe you just confirm the email is valid. If you send STOP back you just confirm there's a human reading the messages at that number.

Besides, this seems to be an US only thing so it will only work for law abiding US based spammers^H^H^Hdirect marketers. Not for spammers outside the US, US based spammers that don't care about the law or scam/phishing messages.

If you know you signed up for it, use STOP.

If you don’t, block and report the number. Otherwise you indicate to the spammer that you’re a bonafide human, and they’ll even sell that information to others.

This applies to picking up calls from numbers you don’t know. Sometimes you’ll hear silence while you repeat “Hello?” and the call drops. That’s just a machine testing to see if you’re a worthwhile target.

Instead, let unknown calls go to voicemail.

I’m shocked at the lack of knowledge here.

If you think a bad actor is targeting you, DO NOT REPLY.

They will not honor your opt out request but they may use your number in the future as you’ve confirmed there’s a human behind it. They may even sell lists of repliers to other bad actors.

I have been replying STOP to all political messages and I get 1-2 a WEEK right now. I lived in New Hampshire until a few years ago, so I should be on every single list imaginable.

I fully support the block, delete, report junk approach.

Spam should never be in the "better ask for forgiveness than ask for permission" bucket.

On a related noted - does the "Report Junk" button do anything on iOS? Is there any verification that something happens when you press it?

I kept getting texts about politics with a link to some survey or scam or something. I looked up the domain in the link and found it was registered through Cloudflare, so I filed an abuse report.

I still get the texts, although not as much, but they have a different domain, so that's...something I guess?

Replying STOP means you are a real person who doesn't ignore texts from unknown senders, which means you will only receive more spam.

I have a related question regarding snail mail: when I lived in the US, Utah in particular, I used to get tons and tons of ad leaflets on my mail; so much that it was hard just sorting out the trash (and not throwing a bill away, which I did twice). Is there a way to tell the postal service to stop this? The volume was insane.

Just disable texts and use whatsapp instead no? I reenable it if I sign up for a restaurants waitlist.

I always report junk but it does not seem to stop them.. Should be a better way

I think it depends on the carrier. With Verizon, replying STOP seems to block the number. But I only do that with political texts (I get a lot of them). For phishing I just delete/report junk.

disable notifications for unknown senders - ios has this hidden deep under notifications setting

wish there was DROP | JUNK | SPAM | REPORT option where provider &/or FCC could direct investigate spam peeps

plus mains & MVNOs checked DO NOT CALL / DO NOT TEXT registry before letting known spam accounts through etc

Wow. Crazy. I never get spam SMS in Germany. I’ve had my number for 20+ years. If I did, I would report it to the federal agency in charge of number assignment. I hear they are quite effective in following up with reports.

It pisses me off that Outlook no longer allows you to report something as spam anymore without also sending an unsubscribe. Because I do feel uncertainty of how that signal could be used.

If it's from an org that I've donated to or company sure. But if it's just a random scam text, no.

I don’t reply, and report junk and block any number that sends me what appears to be an automated text that I wasn’t expecting. I do the same with emails subscriptions that I didn’t knowingly subscribe to.

If anyone legitimate gets caught up in that, I’m not sorry, blame the spammers for ruining it for everyone.

First off, add yourself to the FCC's do not call list: https://www.donotcall.gov/

Once you've done that, they have 31 days to comply. There's plenty of legal entities that still will call you. If you answer, be polite, play the dope a bit to get the necessary unfortunately, ask how they got the number, then request a manager (yes, they have one, they will tell you they don't. Be polite but insist). When you get the manager politely ask for the company details, then tell them to immediately remove you from their list. Their business can be shut down for violations so once they know you know, they take you seriously (FCC takes reports more seriously when more detailed). They'll probably hang up on you, this is okay. Report them anyways (do this legal or not. They can get their voip removed and whatever shell they're using. It's still annoying for them and they might remove you because you're not worth it)

Second, don't answer phone calls. It is a practice to call, listen for a voice, then log that number as active.

Text messages are more difficult. It depends on the service but you can probably text stop. The difficulty of blocking is that legit services will use the same number to text you verification codes (can we fucking kill sms 2FA‽)

You can also sign up for a relay service (I use Firefox, but use whatever). I do this for email and every website has a unique email. Things like + for Gmail don't work and are filtered. You can also do this for phone numbers but it's more expensive.

Fourth, aggressively unsubscribe, report to FCC, change settings on devices, and so on. Do this for your non-tech savvy friends and family. Get them to use services like signal that are privacy preserving, don't leak metadata, AND is easy enough Grandma can use. Install ublock origin into their browsers and some other privacy preserving stuff and edit settings. Get them to use Firefox instead of Chrome if you can.

You need to do this to others because they will leak your information (most of my information leak comes from my parents. I even get emails in their names...)

If you want to take a step further, get a scrubbing service like optery. There's a lot of shady shit so be careful who you pick.

Edit: you can do a similar thing for mail. There is a $5 processing fee. Sucks, but sadly it's junk mail that keeps the post office alive (do not put "return to sender" unless it's prepaid. You need to give a reason otherwise your postal worker is just being nice and throwing it away for you. Don't create more work for them)

https://consumer.ftc.gov/articles/how-stop-junk-mail

Only from a legitimate source. Like if I signed up for alerts for something and don't want them anymore.

If you are in the US, reply STOP. Carriers will enforce that. If you are outside the US and don't live in a place where carriers are legally obligated to enforce that keyword don't send anything. It will let them know they found a human.

Yes. I reply STOP and UNSUBSCRIBE to bad recruiters on LinkedIn too.

Don’t reply - that can be used to confirm your number is real. That info is used and resold to spam you even more. Also the STOP keyword works only on some source phone numbers technically.

In the US you can report the spam texts by forwarding the message to 7726 (“SPAM” on your keypad) at which point your carrier will text you back and ask for the source number. This doesn’t report the message to the government agencies but just your carrier, so they can hopefully punish the platforms sending spam.

Use a site like https://www.freecarrierlookup.com/ to see which carrier or platform sent it, which is useful for the next step of reporting offenders.

Now report the incident at the FTC and FCC websites. Do this every single time so it eventually creates difficulties for the platforms enabling this. Mention the carrier or platform carrying the spam. Put in all the details correctly.

https://reportfraud.ftc.gov/

https://consumercomplaints.fcc.gov/hc/en-us/requests/new

If it is an iMessage you should use the built in “report junk” feature.

You can also go to the website of the platform that carried the message to report things through their abuse reporting pages, but not all of them are diligent. Some are happy taking money from spammers to abuse you, and will make you keep reporting each phone number that spams you because they do nothing about it except block that one number from contacting you. They won’t fix the underlying root cause of why they have all these illegal abusers as customers.

My personal experience is that the vast majority of text spam comes from a few offending text messaging platforms - for example Sinch (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinch_AB) and Bandwidth (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bandwidth_Inc.) for example. These are potentially seemingly commercial platforms for spammers. Note that Sinch owns Mailgun and Mailjet too and has a long documented history of legal trouble due to spamming. Businesses should avoid using these platforms because their own reputation and delivery will be affected by being mixed with spammers.