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Customer is mistakenly accused of text spamming for repeatedly replying STOP to political texts (www.phonearena.com)
submitted 1 year ago* by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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A Visible customer was recently the victim of what seems to be a misunderstanding of the company's automated spam detection system. According to the user, after working with customer service to reactivate an account, the response from the company alleged that the deactivation was due to the account being flagged for excessive text messaging — or spam, as that is against the company's terms and conditions.

However, there is one problem: the user states this wasn't spam, but rather they were responding "STOP" to a barrage of unsolicited political messages. This situation has highlighted a potential conflict between automated spam detection systems and legitimate user responses, especially in the context of increasing political text messaging.

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[–] 135 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Hindsight is 20/20 but this could have been avoided by just not replying and blocking the number instead. Replying "STOP" just verifies that it's a good phone number and that you're reading their texts. Then they collect that information and sell it to other spammers.

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  • [–] 69 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Exactly what I do. Don’t respond and I just block and report.

    I do the same for phone calls from unknown numbers. I just press the volume button to mute the ringer and let it time out. If you hang up or pickup you get added to the list as active.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago* (2 children)

    Android has a feature where you can just ignore an incoming call. It doesn't hang up it just stops playing the ringtone and goes back to the home screen.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    I've been using the 'Silence' app, which lets only known-callers ring your phone. The rest get sent straight to voicemail

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  • [–] 26 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    I’m pretty sure the US has a law that requires people to stop texting you after you send STOP. Additionally, service providers like Amazon will just remove subscriptions if they receive a STOP.

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  • [–] 39 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    the US has a law

    Laws? What about them? We don't follow laws here anymore.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Yes but they're all based in India so it doesn't matter.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago*

    Problem with that is there may be other services that also leverage the same short code, meaning you may be blocking something you need in the future.

    Edit: apparently according to Twilio:

    Shared short codes are not permitted in the US and Canada or in most countries worldwide.

    The only (very narrow) exception to the prohibition on shared short codes that is permitted by US/Canada carriers is a short code that sends OTP (one-time passwords) or authentication codes with strict adherence to a template, and no option for customization by the brands that are sharing the short code.

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