https://www.wsj.com/tech/personal-tech/political-text-messages-stop-17cf2abb

I Replied ‘Stop’ to a Political Text Message. I Got 100 More.

Our columnist tried to cut off unwanted texts, and a barrage followed. Here’s how she ultimately banished them.

By Joanna Stern, Oct. 31, 2024 1:03 pm ET

Friday, 12:05 p.m.: “Pres. Trump’s Sec. of State here!” 

I might have actually bought that Mike Pompeo was texting me from his fave lunch spot, if it weren’t for the survey link and donation request that followed. I replied, firmly, “Stop.”

Friday, 1 p.m. until midnight: “It’s JD Vance.” It’s Don Jr.” “Ted Cruz here.”

Twenty-seven more text messages took over my inbox, all claiming to be from various Republican candidates and political-action committees. On Saturday, 28 more arrived. On Sunday, another 29. 

In the game of political texts, “Stop” apparently means “Go! Go! Go!”

Perhaps you’ve heard there’s an election next week. Ahead of it, campaigns and political groups are scrambling to get their messages out and gather last-minute donations. Some are using shady tactics to get it done.

For years, I’ve passed on—and abided by—the advice of messaging experts: Text “Stop” to end unwanted messages, as long as they’re not blatantly scammy. Often it works. Last week? Not so much.

“Unfortunately, there are unscrupulous texting vendors out there who will perversely use that opt-out message that you sent back,” said Thomas Peters, chief executive of RumbleUp, a political texting platform. “They use that as a data point, that ‘Oh, we found a live number!’”

Even though my flood of messages came from right-leaning groups, others I’ve talked to have had similar barrages from the left. 

Look at that—a nonpartisan issue we can all agree on: Relentless political texts need to stop.

Since the text-pocalypse hit my iPhone, I’ve been digging into what happened, and how to filter out the SMS spam. Here’s what I suggest in these final days of election-related text spam.

1. Stop texting ‘Stop’

That Friday, after I got texts from Pompeo’s Champion American Values PAC and Harrison Butker’s Upright PAC, I texted “Stop” to both of them. Within an hour, the pace of messages from new numbers picked up, like my dog at the sight of a dropped chicken nugget. Another and another and another, almost every hour.

To understand what happened, let’s quickly detour to Political Texting 101. A campaign or PAC hires a campaign service provider, which provides a software platform to manage lists, target messaging and decide who gets what. The service provider then works with an aggregator to send out mass texts across cellular carriers. When you reply “Stop,” your request goes through the carrier, the aggregator and the service provider.

The aggregator that sent those two messages is Telnyx. David Casem, its CEO and co-founder, says my stop requests were processed successfully. And it’s true: I never got another text from Pompeo or Butker’s PACs again. But I did get messages from over 50 other politically aligned groups.

Peters and other industry insiders say the flood likely came from the campaign service provider, which likely shared their lists. Once it spotted a “live one”—someone actually responding—it marked the number and referred it to other money-seeking groups. Some also suggested the PACs could have shared the number. 

Casem didn’t share the name of the campaign service provider targeting those messages at me, citing privacy restrictions. The PACs didn’t respond to my requests for their service provider’s name.

The moral: When in doubt, don’t respond, don’t click links. Don’t show signs of life.

2. Report as junk

Now that you’ve resisted the urge to reply, you should flag the message. On an iPhone, tap the “Report Junk” button under the body of the message and then tap “Delete and Report Junk.” If you haven’t opened the message, swipe left on it, then tap the garbage icon.

This moves the message into your iPhone’s Recently Deleted folder, and reports it as spam to Apple and your cellular carrier. Apple, specifically, receives the sender’s number and message. If it determines the sender is a spammer, the company says it takes action to block additional unwanted messages from that source.

You can also block that number: Tap the number at the top of the text then Info > Block Caller.

3. Get a text spam filter

This week, my jealousy of Android users runs deep. Google’s operating system has advanced, real-time spam filtering, so many of these messages don’t reach the inbox.

Apple doesn’t have that, but it does have a tool for filtering all messages from mystery numbers into an Unknown Senders folder (Settings > Apps > Messages > Message Filtering > Filter Unknown Senders). The issue with that is that most of us get a few important messages from people not in our Contacts, potentially a doctor’s office or work colleague.

You can get a spam filter from Apple’s App Store. On Saturday morning I installed Stop Donation Spam and paid the $10-a-year subscription. Life instantly improved. Now, nearly all the texts go straight into a Junk folder.

“I was so sick and tired of getting the spam and the other apps didn’t specify how they would deal with specifically political spam,” said Marc Love, a Brooklyn-based software engineer who built the app in his spare time.

After you download the app, you enable filtering in Settings (Settings > Messages > Filter Unknown Senders and select the SMS Filtering app). The big issue: These spam apps divert the contents, attachments and sender info from any texts from entities outside your Contacts, sending it to the developers’ servers.

Love says his service collects minimal data, and what he does collect is anonymized. He confirmed he didn’t get my phone number or any personal details.

Right now, it all feels like a giant game of Whac-A-Mole. Here’s hoping that by the next election cycle, we’ll have stronger consumer protections and smarter tech tools, especially on iPhones. 

Until then, when you feel like texting “Stop,” just stop yourself.

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