What to do when SMS spammers won’t stop

Newsfeed

MyBroadband Newsfeed
Staff member
Joined
Jun 28, 2017
Messages
7,221
Reaction score
1,044
What to do when SMS spammers won’t stop

If you reply STOP to an SMS marketing message, but the company continues to spam you and they are a member of WASPA, you should lay a complaint.

Speaking at a media event in Johannesburg, the industry association said it investigates complaints like these and sanctions companies who are found to be in violation of its code of conduct.
 
Last edited:
Most decent phones have SMS/Calling blocking capabilities built in so why install c*ap like this that override your standard/default dialler/messaging applications and shares your phonebook to the world out there. Some consumers of these so called Free apps really caught like suckers

Truecaller already has a database that will take me millenniums to gather.
 
What to do when SMS spammers won’t stop

If you reply STOP to an SMS marketing message, but the company continues to spam you and they are a member of WASPA, you should lay a complaint.

Speaking at a media event in Johannesburg, the industry association said it investigates complaints like these and sanctions companies who are found to be in violation of its code of conduct.

Replying to any of those STOP messages, be it sms, be it email is just plain stupid
 
Most decent phones have SMS/Calling blocking capabilities built in so why install c*ap like this that override your standard/default dialler/messaging applications and shares your phonebook to the world out there. Some consumers of these so called Free apps really caught like suckers ��

How to do without Truecaller https://stuff.co.za/how-to-block-unwanted-phone-calls-without-using-truecaller/

The benefit of Truecaller is you know they are spam before they even try and contact you - so you don't even have to block them.
 
The benefit of Truecaller is you know they are spam before they even try and contact you - so you don't even have to block them.

The issue I've found is that plenty of legit calls are deemed as spam by True Caller.

Whenever Audi, Hollard, any of my banks call me it all goes to spam so I end up having to answer to spam calls anyway.
 
You can report the spammer to the Direct Marketing Association of South Africa (DMASA), and register on the organisation’s National Opt-out Database.

It is widely known that the DMMA's opt-out database has been hacked at least three times in the past and that the personal information (including ID numbers) of people who registered to opt-out, was stored in plain text and consequently exposed.

There is absolutely no reason for storing any of that information as plain text, each piece of data can be stored in the database as hashed and salted data.

When a DMMA member wants to query whether or not a person has opted out of spam from DMMA members, the query should involve hashing and salting each piece of data, if any match is found in the database, it means that the associated person has opted out.

Similarly, anyone that wants to update their opt-out details, can do so by providing the same set of data they provided when opting-out, as it would result in the same hashed and salted data which would be enough to authenticate any changes the person wants to make. And if that's not enough, the DMMA could ask for a challenge phrase to be hashed and salted and stored for authentication purposes (although that would be overkill).
 
It's built into android already though. Inc. of digit filtering. It goes the "blocked box".
I have Android 7.1.2 and the default SMS app does not allow for filtering based on message content.
Perhaps Android 8 or a vendor app.
 
I have Android 7.1.2 and the default SMS app does not allow for filtering based on message content.
Perhaps Android 8 or a vendor app.

I am on LG 7.0
Samsung also hashttps://phones.techjunkie.com/guide/block-text-messages-galaxy-s9/
 
LineageOS 14

Isn't the point of LineageOS to be as bare bones as possible? Android Messages (stock) doesn't have it either. Weird that Google doesn't implement it, though it seems from Googling that they want you to use the Hangout app for SMS, though they are removing SMS functionality from it (according to Project Fi).
 
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X