<story><title>My own phone number is now spam texting me</title><url>https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/28/22999719/spam-texts-own-phone-number-verizon-att-tmobile</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>BoxOfRain</author><text>Isn&amp;#x27;t there campaigning laws around that? If a political campaign did that in the UK they&amp;#x27;d be raked over the coals by the Electoral Commission.&lt;p&gt;Not that the country&amp;#x27;s been able to do anything about the sheer volume of scam texts pretending to be the Post Office with a parcel for you or Microsoft telling people their Windows boxes are full of viruses.</text></item><item><author>sillysaurusx</author><text>I’m starting to get those too. From the trump campaign, of all things. Somehow they got ahold of my number and keep asking me to go save America.&lt;p&gt;Not sure which is worse, someone trying to sell me stuff or that.&lt;p&gt;How much volume? Is it a daily annoyance? My wife seems to get hit harder than me, but as far as I can tell we’ve both been equally careless about sharing our number online. So I’m dreading the day that these people figure out how to turn text messages into a gmail spam inbox.&lt;p&gt;It feels like it’s time to just write a Bayesian filter and proxy all text messages through it. It was theoretically easy to do that back when you could send texts just by emailing a special address, but sadly I think carriers ditched that feature. Nowadays I’m not sure where to start if the goal is to proxy our texts like that, but I’d like to.</text></item><item><author>karlshea</author><text>My impression is STIR&amp;#x2F;SHAKEN is only for voice calls, not SMS.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m no longer getting almost any robocalls on Verizon as of a couple of months ago when they &amp;quot;turned on&amp;quot; STIR&amp;#x2F;SHAKEN. What I am getting instead is the same volume of spam text messages.</text></item><item><author>Animats</author><text>The &amp;quot;STIR&amp;#x2F;SHAKEN initiative&amp;quot; was supposed to fix this.[1] There&amp;#x27;s now a whole system with signed certificates, much like SSL certs, to sign caller ID info. The info is at least good enough to find out which carrier generated the phony data.&lt;p&gt;You should file a complaint with the FCC that your carrier has not clearly not properly implemented STIR&amp;#x2F;SHAKEN, since they badly mis-identified the source of a call. While calls from outside the US can be unsigned, the carrier should detect that the number is inconsistent with the source.&lt;p&gt;There are &amp;quot;A&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;B&amp;quot;, and &amp;quot;C&amp;quot; level of verification. &amp;quot;A&amp;quot; calls are probably legit. The others, maybe not.&lt;p&gt;If you&amp;#x27;re in California, try making a personal data request to your carrier for the detailed STIR&amp;#x2F;SHAKEN data for that call.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;commlawgroup.com&amp;#x2F;2021&amp;#x2F;stir-shaken-robocall-mitigation-compliance-regime-what-is-it-why-is-it-important-who-must-comply-how-and-by-when&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;commlawgroup.com&amp;#x2F;2021&amp;#x2F;stir-shaken-robocall-mitigatio...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ldoughty</author><text>In the USA, the law makers exempt themselves from many laws. For example, political campaigns can ignore the &amp;quot;Do not call&amp;quot; list which the government maintains which allows citizens to opt out of cold calls.</text></comment>
<story><title>My own phone number is now spam texting me</title><url>https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/28/22999719/spam-texts-own-phone-number-verizon-att-tmobile</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>BoxOfRain</author><text>Isn&amp;#x27;t there campaigning laws around that? If a political campaign did that in the UK they&amp;#x27;d be raked over the coals by the Electoral Commission.&lt;p&gt;Not that the country&amp;#x27;s been able to do anything about the sheer volume of scam texts pretending to be the Post Office with a parcel for you or Microsoft telling people their Windows boxes are full of viruses.</text></item><item><author>sillysaurusx</author><text>I’m starting to get those too. From the trump campaign, of all things. Somehow they got ahold of my number and keep asking me to go save America.&lt;p&gt;Not sure which is worse, someone trying to sell me stuff or that.&lt;p&gt;How much volume? Is it a daily annoyance? My wife seems to get hit harder than me, but as far as I can tell we’ve both been equally careless about sharing our number online. So I’m dreading the day that these people figure out how to turn text messages into a gmail spam inbox.&lt;p&gt;It feels like it’s time to just write a Bayesian filter and proxy all text messages through it. It was theoretically easy to do that back when you could send texts just by emailing a special address, but sadly I think carriers ditched that feature. Nowadays I’m not sure where to start if the goal is to proxy our texts like that, but I’d like to.</text></item><item><author>karlshea</author><text>My impression is STIR&amp;#x2F;SHAKEN is only for voice calls, not SMS.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m no longer getting almost any robocalls on Verizon as of a couple of months ago when they &amp;quot;turned on&amp;quot; STIR&amp;#x2F;SHAKEN. What I am getting instead is the same volume of spam text messages.</text></item><item><author>Animats</author><text>The &amp;quot;STIR&amp;#x2F;SHAKEN initiative&amp;quot; was supposed to fix this.[1] There&amp;#x27;s now a whole system with signed certificates, much like SSL certs, to sign caller ID info. The info is at least good enough to find out which carrier generated the phony data.&lt;p&gt;You should file a complaint with the FCC that your carrier has not clearly not properly implemented STIR&amp;#x2F;SHAKEN, since they badly mis-identified the source of a call. While calls from outside the US can be unsigned, the carrier should detect that the number is inconsistent with the source.&lt;p&gt;There are &amp;quot;A&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;B&amp;quot;, and &amp;quot;C&amp;quot; level of verification. &amp;quot;A&amp;quot; calls are probably legit. The others, maybe not.&lt;p&gt;If you&amp;#x27;re in California, try making a personal data request to your carrier for the detailed STIR&amp;#x2F;SHAKEN data for that call.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;commlawgroup.com&amp;#x2F;2021&amp;#x2F;stir-shaken-robocall-mitigation-compliance-regime-what-is-it-why-is-it-important-who-must-comply-how-and-by-when&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;commlawgroup.com&amp;#x2F;2021&amp;#x2F;stir-shaken-robocall-mitigatio...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>sillysaurusx</author><text>It’s interesting to hear that the UK has sensible laws about this sort of thing. Over here in Murica we get these: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;imgur.com&amp;#x2F;a&amp;#x2F;UjELy2y&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;imgur.com&amp;#x2F;a&amp;#x2F;UjELy2y&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;My guess is that they’re sending this to all numbers in a certain area code. I’m in Missouri, which was mostly red. So they kindly delivered a MAGA to my phone and I’m like “thanks! … tell me who gave you my number so I can hire a hitman on them please”&lt;p&gt;The political tactics at play are actually quite fascinating to me, because they seem so dumb. But it’s the opposite. In reality it’s effective, and I’ve always wondered why. So it’s interesting to hear that politicians are prohibited from doing this in other countries, and makes me wonder if it’s an effective policy. It seems like it might be.&lt;p&gt;Of course, that doesn’t help rid us of the silagra spammers, but maybe the FCC can come up with a solution that can prohibit both. It feels sort of hopeless, but then I remember that we could literally proxy every text message through our laptops, run them through a 1997 naive Bayesian filter, and eliminate 97% of the problem with 0.03% false positives. It seems like a matter of time till some service comes along and makes that schlep effortless, and I can just pay $5&amp;#x2F;mo for the privilege of dodging spammers.</text></comment>