alt Hacker NewsFirst 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)
Replies
The Do Not Call list does nothing for SMS or anything but voice calls. The Do Not Call list only prevents legitimate companies which are cold-calling you. Do Not Call cannot prevent the scams or criminals, and it cannot prevent anyone who has already established an "existing business relationship" including political campaigns and non-profit fundraisers. I've been on DNC for decades and, thankfully I do not receive many bad calls at all, but it's difficult to say how much to attribute to DNC itself.
I receive, however, a fair measure of suspicious SMS, real-estate scams, political campaigns both legit and sus, and some pretty slick "USPS shipping" RCS phishing messages.
Now my Pixel Pro has a lot of spam protections and I need to leave them all completely disabled, because I routinely need to answer inbound voice calls from sketchy numbers, time-sensitive, because they could be a delivery driver or a taxi service. I just never know. The app does tag known spammer numbers, which sometimes turn out legit after all?
I consider SMS the worst mode of communication bar-none. It's locked to a single device with a single SIM. They can't be categorized, organized, tagged, forwarded, managed en masse, exported, or anything. To me it's a single-stream jumble of electronic jerks demanding my immediate attention and reactions over a most impersonal medium. I likewise disdain voice calls in many cases, so don't get me started.
You can feel ok about replying STOP to text messages from shortcodes. It's not impossible, but it would be an extremely bad process for an organization to have their OTP and their marketing messages (let alone spammy stuff) on the same short code.
There are short codes that are dedicated to OTP. Replying STOP to this number should not affect the ability for you to receive OTP for a different company login.
If you're an engineer for Google or Apple the best thing you could do is build into an easy way for users to report to the FCC. It's a routine forum, no ML needed but hey, pitch it if you need that to get this shit done.
If you work somewhere that is spamming and enshitified, the way to convince your boss is to show them that their domains are being blocked and that leads to less money. That's the language they understand. They don't understand metrics (that's how we got here in the first place. So don't get technical!)
The FCC is defunct. I've been on the list for eons. Reporting is, AFAICT, a huge waste of time, and doesn't seem to change anything.
You can play wack-a-mole with uBlock, but it's wack-a-mole, and poor bandaid over our government agencies not doing the job they're supposed to be doing. You'll never get them all; AFAICT recently, my own state government sold my information to private corporations.