- never signed up for anything like this,
- never donated to or signed up for emails from the DNC, et al.,
- political texts like this come all the time, and
- I hesitate to reply “stop” because I don’t want them to know this is a live number (is my instinct here outdated/inapplicable?)
For sure don’t in any way respond, just report spam and block the number. Lots of these things are phishing attempts, trying to get you to give personal information (or even money), and aren’t connected to the things they mention.
Lots MostPretty well all of these things are phishing attempts.Follow parent’s advice.
Never, ever, ever respond, even reverse-uno.
Otherwise, you’ve helped them.There’s no “Report Junk” on iOS Messages unless it’s an email address texting you.
Every message I have received on my iPhone from someone not in my contacts has this after that latest message:
Not true—I just successfully reported this text as junk. It tries to auto-detect spam, and coming from an email address is one of the signs of that, but not the only one.
Really? I wonder why. Though I’ve always assumed the one on my phone was from Verizon, not the app or the OS.
You must have seen the older phishing attempts with caller’s named “Potential Spam”
Not sure if that technique still works but you can still mark callers as junk/spam.
Hey, it’s White dudes for Harris. We’re getting ready to promote Kamala Harris this November and we need your help. Our first call is this Monday at 8pm EST - will you join us?
On the one hand, thank you for being an accessibility buddy. On the other, shall we also transcribe the number and web address of my spammer, too?
Phone number appears to be (202) 894-8505, URL is https://whitedudes4harris.org/call9
“White dudes for Harris”
A few different things contribute to this and, unfortunately, there’s very little you can do to fix it. I’ve spent (wasted) a ton of time trying to prevent it on my end.
- If you used your phone number on your voter registration, reregister immediately without your phone number. This is public information and it’s where these things start.
- Find contact info for your local, county, and state parties. All sides. Call them up and ask that your information be removed from their database(s). You might have to escalate a bit because usually phone bankers don’t know how to do it or don’t understand why you want privacy. Worst case scenario you can pull out a sob story about an abusive ex and how your information isn’t supposed to be public at all. That will usually get your shit pulled.
- While you’re on those calls, try to find out where they either send or pull their data from. Next go there and do step 2 again.
- Repeat step 3 as many times as it takes.
However, individual candidates who may have received a copy of your data or canvassed you might not get the notice. Eventually their copies of your data might get leaked. You have no control over this and no recourse. I know this from personal experience. Through a unique mixup with a name, I have slowly watched my data go from politician to politician to now general spam. It’s not coming from data brokers because the only place the mixup happened was with political data.
Best of all, the FTC doesn’t give a shit. If someone “manually” sends you a political text, it doesn’t require prior consent. The “manual” setup for this is a bunch of VoIP shit that doesn’t actually go back to a real human ever and is about as “manual” as the fully automated assembly lines from How It’s Made where a human is standing nearby with a clip board saying “yup that’s a widget.”
Your number is on a list of real numbers with real identities associated with them that was sold to them. Data brokers sell this information daily. They already know your number is real, but in order to comply with the law, they have to provide you with a legitimate option to opt out, so you will actually stop receiving correspondence from them if you ask them to stop (it is legally required). If not, they could be subject to a fine, but you’d obviously have to file a complaint with the relevant regulatory body for that.
If you do not attempt to opt out, they cannot be fined for spam if this is part of a legitimate donation campaign. If you don’t reply, they will continue sending messages to you in the future. It costs them almost nothing to do, so even if they didn’t know your number was real, they would do it anyway. Most of the people who donate from these messages don’t reply through text message anyway. And if this were an actual scam, then there is nothing they gain from receiving a text back so long as you do not open their link. But again, in order for legal action to be taken (since these political reach outs are legal and not spam so long as there is an option to opt out), you must first try to opt out.
EDIT: Feel free to block the number after opting out. If they are legitimate (though the name is really fishy), then opting out will remove your number from all of their solicitors’ lists, so you won’t get texts or calls from different numbers working for the same campaign. Again, replying doesn’t give them anything even if it is a scam, as your number was obtained from a real list sold to them by a data broker; they already know the number is in service. Just don’t click the link in the text, and don’t reply with anything other than
stop.In Australia laws like what you describe exist, but political parties are exempt. I doubt that we’re the only country where that is the case.
While I would have to find the US law and examine it more closely to tell if that is true here, these groups are not actually representatives of political parties. They are groups of self-proclaimed political advocates that try to raise money to host events that raise awareness of their causes for local voters. But they would not qualify for an exemption due to association with a political party, as they are not officially connected to or endorsed by a party.
Political Communications to land lines are generally exempt from do not call. Cellular communications require prior consent, but the “consent” could be as flimsy as being registered with a certain party. You must be able to opt-out from the communication, and that’s why they have the “reply stop” verbiage. If they don’t honor your request, you should report it. Failing to actually make an effort to stop the communication (as is strangely being suggested) should be the only reason you would continue to receive them.
The direct affiliation with a party or campaign is not a requirement.
Here is the relevant information from the FCC https://www.fcc.gov/rules-political-campaign-calls-and-texts
Yes, I believe all of that is in line with what I have stated. Just to clarify, my interpretation of the previous comment was that political parties were exempt from the requirement to provide an opt out in Australia for political parties (by my interpretation, just the official parties and not unrelated political organizations), and they implied they believed it to be the case in many other countries. I have not recently reviewed the relevant laws, so I was not 100% certain if that implication would prove true in the United States (though was pretty confident that was not the case by my previous experiences with messages from officially endorsed organizations), but I went on to explain how these are not officially endorsed by political parties anyway, so if such an exemption did exist, it should not apply to this particular message.
Thank you for the clarification!
Yeah, I was adding clarification, not disagreeing!
Yeah, no.
That’s covered by political activity in the same laws. The list of exemptions here is pretty broad and goes well beyond actual officially registered political parties.
Here’s the list for the Australian Privacy Laws: https://www.alrc.gov.au/publication/for-your-information-australian-privacy-law-and-practice-alrc-report-108/41-political-exemption/exemption-for-registered-political-parties-political-acts-and-practices/
And here’s the restrictions around spam: https://www.acma.gov.au/political-calls-emails-and-text-messages
Interesting to note, though another user pointed out that this does not work the same way in the United States (political organizations still have to provide a means to opt out).
Every 4 years.
First_time_?.jpeg
Remarkably, yeah. I always get a little political text spam, but since early ’24 it’s been harassment.
Seems more like…Harrissment
is my instinct here outdated/inapplicable?
Yes.
It’s so cheap to send SMS messages, and you don’t pay for undeliverable messages, so they can just send to random numbers.
They also receive deliverability responses for each number. So they know whether a phone received the message whether or not you reply.
Finally, if you reply STOP you’re unlikely to fit their demographic very well anyway. As in… they’re not trying to reach the type of people who will actively try to avoid receiving these messages.
That said, there’s probably no point replying STOP because most firms just wont honor it in the long term. As in they might not message you for the remainder of that particular messaging project (campaign), but they’ll just start a new campaign tomorrow with a new sender and no “STOP” requests.
It’s not like you can even use Do Not Call features on this anyway, political stuff is exempt (though if it’s fraudulent that’s still bitter tampering/intimidation etc.).
welcome to the election season in the United States.
Political messages also are allowed to circumvent the CAN-SPAM act and other messaging regulations. I have plans to just leave my phone in airplane mode until mid-November. Sure, people may think I died, but at least I’ll have peace.
They (politicos) argue it’s necessary to get the word out, one party in particular has a habit of sourcing their messaging through various vendors that may or may not follow the rules.
Legally, they must honor stop. They can be reported and fined too.
…of course in real life, it’s super hard to stop all this trash messaging nobody wants. Wonder how much carbon this spamming generates.
Not a lot of carbon, SMS messages are very energy/resource efficient. The more direct alternative would be flyers and mail letters, which create more carbon mainly due to paper use and also cause pollution.
Agreed there is always a more, and really want all paper spam to stop immediately. Disagree on the impact of mass-messaging at a nation scale.
Every SMS will wake a phone and keep it active for 10-20 seconds, if background processes firing don’t keep it awake longer. This robs every texted phone of battery wear and flash wear, as well as using energy that will have to be recharged. (Arguably, pointless app updates to manipulate review systems are an even bigger energy drain here. Or how carriers put cheaper plans on weaker bands, causing the modem to have to yell louder.)
The messages are in the control channel through the cell network, and the network must schedule them inside the management traffic. Probably less of a power hit here, but still a hit. There’s power running the machines sending the messages, and the microscopic hit from always on network hardware along the whole path. Individually, it’s all noise. Collectively, it’s going to be quantifiable power use.
It’s still spam and I’ll report it and block the number every time.
White dudes for Harris? This name seems a parody
I hate how everyone seems dead set on separating everyone by the color of their skin. Jesus Christ, y’all mind if I just exist as a human instead of what color I am?
They are a real group. They’re part of a coalition with the White Women for Harris, who raised between $2-$8 million for Kamala Harris. Pantsuit Nation is rising up and New Balance Kingdom is going to match their work.
I just got this same bullshit.
I keep getting texts from Donald for some reason
I’m getting both! And I’ve never been a centrist in my life!
Political organizations and non-profits are exempt from this list.
Good thing my browser doesn’t keep cookies, or that might’ve leaked my Google info. But here’s what the link goes to:
Why is it so obsessed with “white dudes”? Even if you are soecifically tagreting them, it seems odd to keep repeating it, especially since people who are goinf to vote a black woman of asian origins as preaident should tend not to be white supremacists
Omg I h9 this so fucking much
Yeah political messages aren’t covered under antispam laws, so definitely don’t send a stop message. You’ll immediately get messages from a bunch of other sources now that they have you.
