{"id":44796,"date":"2024-09-10T15:06:30","date_gmt":"2024-09-10T19:06:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=44796"},"modified":"2024-09-12T09:25:23","modified_gmt":"2024-09-12T13:25:23","slug":"what-to-do-with-unwanted-political-spam-texts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2024\/09\/10\/what-to-do-with-unwanted-political-spam-texts\/","title":{"rendered":"What to Do With Unwanted Political Spam Texts"},"content":{"rendered":"

John Gruber<\/a> (Mastodon<\/a>):<\/p>\n

\n

For several months this year — while receiving, I’d say, around half a dozen such messages per day, every day, every week — I tried using Messages’s “Delete and Report Junk” feature. As far as I can tell it didn’t do a damn thing. Now that I see Apple’s own documentation, I can see why. Using this feature doesn’t even block the sender from sending more messages.<\/p>\n

About a month ago I switched tactics and started responding to all such messages with “STOP”. I usually send it in all caps, just like that, because I’m so annoyed. I resisted doing this until a month ago thinking that sending any reply at all to these messages, including the magic “STOP” keyword, would only serve to confirm to the sender that an actual person was looking at the messages sent to my phone number. But this has actually worked. Election season is heating up but I’m getting way way fewer political spam texts now. Your mileage may vary, but for me, the “STOP” response works.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

It works in the sense that I don’t get any more from that number, but I do get more from other numbers about the same topic.<\/p>\n\n

Jeff Gamet<\/a>:<\/p>\n

It’s crazy that I have to open a message, block the sender, then delete and report junk. The delete part often doesn’t show up so I have to report the junk message and then delete. This is multiple times a day. Such a great use of my time.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Update (2024-09-12): Tim Johnsen<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

Should’ve done this ages ago #shortcuts #automation<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

John Gruber (Mastodon): For several months this year — while receiving, I’d say, around half a dozen such messages per day, every day, every week — I tried using Messages’s “Delete and Report Junk” feature. As far as I can tell it didn’t do a damn thing. Now that I see Apple’s own documentation, I can see why. Using […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"2024-09-10T19:06:34Z","apple_news_api_id":"24b80440-9bc9-447e-bdee-44c7d327a895","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2024-09-12T13:25:26Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/AJLgEQJvJRH697kTH0yeolQ","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[31,2321,30,2385,141,1393,356],"class_list":["post-44796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-ios","tag-ios-17","tag-mac","tag-macos-14-sonoma","tag-messages","tag-short-message-service-sms","tag-spam"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44796"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44796\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44832,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44796\/revisions\/44832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}