this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2025
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Customer is mistakenly accused of text spamming for repeatedly replying STOP to political texts (www.phonearena.com)
submitted 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago) by cm0002@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world
18 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

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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[–] Ulrich@feddit.org 101 points 21 hours ago (13 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.

[–] SMillerNL@lemmy.world 22 points 20 hours ago (8 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.

[–] EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world 38 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

That would be really useful if the people behind these texts were subject to US laws.

[–] DogEarBookmark@reddthat.com 8 points 19 hours ago

Or STOP meant "stop," not "yes daddy give me more texts"

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