this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2025
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382
Customer is mistakenly accused of text spamming for repeatedly replying STOP to political texts (www.phonearena.com)
submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by cm0002@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world
26 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 133 points 2 days ago (20 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.

[–] zewm@lemmy.world 68 points 2 days ago (7 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.

[–] lemminator@lemmy.today 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

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

[–] lapping6596@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I use that app to block area codes near my phone number since I moved far away from where I lived when I got this number.

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