Just when I thought I couldn’t get more political spam text messages in a 24 hour period, I’m proven wrong.
I think I’ve gotten like 20 today. This problem is totally out of control and I have no idea what to do about it. It’s also bled over to my wife since even though she’s never donated, they… somehow got her phone number and have been spamming her phone as well.
@gedeonm there is an iOS app called Bouncer. You can create a list of keywords you want to block from messages and it sends them to a junk folder. I used chatgpt to create a list of keywords used by political campaigns. Imported them to Bouncer. Problem solved. Everything happens locally too.
@gedeonm yes, it uses iOS’s ILMessageFilterExtension to locally filter messages. You can check the source code, it’s very simple but effective: https://github.com/afterxleep/Bouncer
@gedeonm Oops. I forgot the other half of the recipe: Settings > Notifications > Messages > Customize Notifications > Allow Notifications > Unknown Senders = OFF
Filtering unknown senders, and then turning off notifications for unknown senders has really improved SMS for me. A few still get through, but suspect those are the ones I sent a STOP reply in the past.
@DazeEnd And you keep a manual eye out for notifications from like confirmation codes, online food orders and the like? So worried if I turn unknown senders completely off I’m gonna miss critical info. 😕
@gedeonm Usually I know if I’m expecting one of those confirmations or codes, and I keep an eye out for it. Once I receive it, I reply with a 👍, which makes iOS treat that number as “known” in the future so it is no longer filtered and notifications are received. Most businesses use the same number (or the same few numbers) for 2FA/confirmations, so in practice it works pretty well.
@gedeonm AT&T’s ActiveArmor spam filter has done pretty well at nixing them for me. I get notices that political calls were attempted but they seldom actually ring through.
@gedeonm yeah, i’m in the same boat. it’s horrible and only getting worse. i insta-report them as spam, even though that seems to do jack-diddly-fucking-squat.
@gedeonm there is one I totally agree with ideologically, but I never had invited them into my texts, constantly begging for funds. I block and report as junk repeatedly, they find another way in.
At least they identify themselves.
But for nearly a decade now, I have not trusted any political fundraiser as even truly representing the ideals they say they support; I suspect liars and pretenders; grifters and fraud.
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