The amount of spam texts I get from Republican campaigns

drislands@lemmy.world to Mildly Infuriating@lemmy.world – 550 points –

It's been going on for months and no matter how many I mark as spam and block they keep coming back with new numbers!

Makes me wonder if someone signed me up for something

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How is this not illegal, but sending spam emails is? What a messed up world.

Illegal in Australia. Obviously doesn't stop scammers though, but most everything else.

Regrettably, political parties are exempt from the DNC Register, even in Australia.

"Registered charities, educational institutions calling students, government bodies and registered political parties are exempt and are allowed to make telemarketing calls to numbers on the register"

Oh, didn't know. Guess they realise it's bad PR. Can't say I've ever had much more than mail drops.

Good news! It is illegal!

Political campaign-related autodialed or prerecorded voice calls, including autodialed live calls, autodialed texts, and prerecorded voice messages, are prohibited to cell phones, pagers or other mobile devices without the called party's prior express consent.

If you think you’ve received a political robocall or text that does not comply with the FCC’s rules, you can file an informal complaint with the FCC at fcc.gov/complaints. If you are receiving texts that you didn’t ask for, report the sender by forwarding the texts to 7726 (or "SPAM"). Campaigns should also honor opt-out requests if you reply "STOP."

I file a complaint for single one I get.

"I will always love you..."

Literal stalkers. Fucking creepy.

Reminds me of messages pornstars send "you".

hey baby, I made this just for youuuuuu.

$9.95

you're a dollar naughtier than most

I wish I had the talent to draw Sexy Nurse Napoleon 😄

I too wish you had that talent so I could witness your glory

I don't have the talent, so this is the best I can come up with [without breaking any rules]:

In my country, I can just report the numbers, and the regulation agencies come down like a ton of bricks on them.

Ah, you have an effective county in this regard. In the US, our lawmakers specifically carved out exceptions for political spam.

Technically I should be able to do so in mine too, but they are soo many calls from so many different numbers it doesnt work

1 more...

No wonder grannies and grandpas fall for those assholes. Regarding your wondering, sometimes sites info leaks because of some vulnerability and they don't even say. Check if some of the sites you have your phone number on hasn't been hacked or some shit. It's surprising how many leaks sites don't report.

If you read them from the bottom up, it's like they're from a super crazy ex.

Grifters gonna grift. They want that sweet sweet donation money.

If you have an iPhone, search for your cell provider by name. Many offer free sms spam blocker apps, like T-mobile’s “Scam Shield”.

You can also log into your carrier’s website to see if there are any free spam blocking features there.

Sounds like Gym Jordan's team was wrong to think they could count on you!

That’s a typo of the cleverest variety considering the millions of human-hours of misery and self harm that occurred after

  • hundreds of athletes were sexually abused at the school where he was a wrestling coach and
  • Jordan became aware of the abuse, and even worse than saying nothing, he also begged victims and their families to deny it as well

Not a typo, I'm deliberately referring to exactly those crimes of his.

referring to exactly those crimes

Thank you for your service.

Next time someone complains about cancel culture, let’s all remember to enlighten them about Gym fucking Jordan, whose ethical bankruptcy has gone unpunished and almost seems forgotten.

I'm also rather fond of the nickname Dim Moran

I'm Don Jr I'm here asking for your opinion not money $.

Should I buy 5 pounds of coke or 8.... never mind I'll just buy 12.

Digging into the FCC's website reveals that robotexts are illegal without prior consent. However, if they hand enter the message, that's legal.

That lines up with my experience the one time I kept getting annoying political texts. There was a human at the other end. They happily removed my number from their list after I threatened to vote for the other team if they kept harassing me. But that was the Democrats.

You can try some of the FCC's recommendations, but I would generally assume malice in this instance. The political entities will probably disappear before anything can be done.

Report Unwanted Calls and Texts

If you think you've received a political robocall or text that does not comply with the FCC’s rules, you can file an informal complaint with the FCC at fcc.gov/complaints. If you are receiving texts that you didn’t ask for, report the sender by forwarding the texts to 7726 (or "SPAM"). Campaigns should also honor opt-out requests if you reply "STOP."

Does it work if it's always a new number? Nikki Haley sends me one a day. Most of them have some shady link to donate or get free shirts so it's definitely some scam either way

For reporting them, probably not. For trying to opt-out with a STOP reply, depends on them playing by the rules. Do you think they will play by the rules? I don't. I would assume malice. That they would forward your number to a bunch of other lists. You might not get Nikki's spam, but you'll get spam from 3 other PACs that are only 2 months old.

Replying to spam is usually just a way to confirm that the victim is a "life" one.

I guess republicans are dumb enough to be susceptible to this garbage?

Democratic candidates send texts too. I don’t go around handing out my phone number but at some point I must have given it to someone, perhaps Bernie when I volunteered for his campaign. Of course they sold it to more democrats who sold it to more democrats. I reply STOP to every single text I get but there are always more because my number gets sold to someone new.

Charities do this too. Give $100 to your local food bank and you’ll start getting donation appeals by mail from 5 other charities.

It should be illegal.

I dunno about other states but in CT they can get your info from voter registration records. 3 local politicians have lost my vote by sending me crap (I contacted them and told them that)

I vaguely remember donating to the bernie campaign, and now for years I just get a ton of emails and texts. What I didn't remember was making an ActBlue account. I didn't have it saved in my password manager, but just for the hell of it I tried logging in recently with a old password I use to reuse, and I had an account.

I removed my phone number, and changed the contact email to mygmail+ACTBLUE@gmail.com. I'm supposed to not get any more texts, and hopefully the emails stop, or at least use the new address for easy filtering.

You're talking about people who consider Newsmax and "One America News" to be the only reliable news sources and believe that Donald Trump, who managed to spend 4 years indirectly robbing them blind and would not spit on them if they were on fire, is somehow the most persecuted man in all of history.

They would believe just about anything.

some of those say they came directly from mr.trump himself /s

Damn that seems really infuriating. Where I live there's a government program to forbid anyone to send you ads or political propaganda (and the best part is that you can report those who slip through the net!) It isn't fool proof but it did decrease the amount of calls from people trying to sell me shit I don't want.

It's legal to buy your information from data brokers. No need for someone to sign you up for anything.

Is this legal?

It probably falls under the 'not illegal' category. They got the number somehow, and I would bet it's from some stupid agreement that lets a company sell his number and whoever buys it is allowed to send messages to it.

It's also hard to get harassment charges for these, since realistically it is hard to contact the assholes and tell them to stop sending messages, which is required for most cases. There's also the issue that harassment needs to be a repeated thing (and usually after being told to stop) from the same source/conspiracy. If you could prove all of these different messages were from the exact same organization, or that each entity sending the messages had collaborated, you could possibly get a judge to agree that harassment took place. Then, of course, your issue becomes the question of who did the harassment. If the judge/jury believes that it was a particular individual at the corporation, maybe that person could be prosecuted, but if they only will say that it was the entity, like a PAC or LLC or inc. or whatever, you're boned. No one holds business/political entities accountable.

All that to say... those of us who get these messages are boned, with little legal recourse. I just block the numbers and delete. It seems like it works, because I haven't gotten any messages like OP did for the last year or so. They must reuse numbers to send texts.

Legality is not a concern when it's paid for

During the 2022 cycle I made the mistake of donating to a lefty cause, and this year I was getting up to twenty (20) grifting emails a day. Just a few well-crafted email filters later, it’s down to zero. For texts, as soon as one comes in it’s “block and report as junk”. I’ll keep this up until I have every fucking number in the US listed as junk I don’t care.

Yeah, I donated for the first time in 2022 as well, and I'm flooded with spam now. I'm never going to donate again. I've just about blocked all of it, but every now and then something still squeaks through.

Is this not illegal in your country?

Perhaps you could contact some of the politicians sending you these texts and ask them what they're going to do to make it illegal?

Here's the fun part- it's illegal to do that if you put yourself on the national do not call list, BUT- political spam calls and texts are exempt. Something tells me our politicians don't want that to change.

Wow, I sure would hate to get a text from Jim Jordan.

As per Hollywood, rip out the SIM card, break into two, hurl your phone to the ground and curb stomp it thrice. That should be enough sanitization.

Welcome to !privacy@lemmy.ml - you'll learn not to share your phone number with strangers.

Looks more like someone (a friend or family member) signed him up as a prank. There’s not much you can do about that specifically.

OP, are you signed up to the federal do not call registry? That might help. https://www.donotcall.gov/

The only other thing I do is either block any text from people not in your contact list and/or use a paid service like RoboKiller.

Does that mean Whatsapp, Signal, Telegram, or...? /s

God damn, you should probably try to sue for that torture!

The Dems do this too. Certainly discouraged me from making donations.

I keep getting spammed by dems, they keep calling me Mark. My name is not Mark...

It's funny you say that. On all the possibly scammy websites that I sign up for, I used Marc xxx as my name, and somehow I did get some texts using that name. I still wonder how they connected my cell# to throwaway emails and a made up name.

Me too! Same name and everything. My name is not Mark, my dad's name is Mark but no one calls him that and he doesn't use it ever. Why that would be linked to my email and phone number? I have no idea.

Some asshole named Carlos used to have my phone number and he was a total deadbeat. I got calls from collection agencies for years. Sometimes they wouldn't believe me that I wasn't Carlos.

I was thinking there's no way only one side is doing this.

I have blocked 100's of these stupid things and God I hate it so much. I think I made it worse when they were saying end=stop on them and I did that for a few and got the whole I unsubscribed message, but they always seem to get worse after that

I get none at all -> I wonder if someone signed you up to receive all of that. Make sure to "thank" them:-P.

What did you put your phone number on? Holy shit. I've never seen anything like that before.

Someone definitely signed you up. For lots of things.

I did that to a friend in college once, but signed her (as if I was her) up for 3 or 4 dozen different religious colleges and organizations, asking them to snail mail her information. Years later she found out it was me and said "I'M STILL GETTING THIS (#&%^@ IN THE MAIL!!!"