Is this just how it’s gonna be till Election Day?

⁨363⁩ ⁨likes⁩

Submitted ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨lars@lemmy.sdf.org⁩ to ⁨mildlyinfuriating@lemmy.world⁩

https://lemmy.sdf.org/pictrs/image/9b949d01-22bb-4ec2-b64e-d16ece0c557c.png

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I hesitate to reply “stop” because I don’t want them to know this is a live number (is my instinct here outdated/inapplicable?)

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NOT_RICK@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Hey there were the krazy kaucasians for Kamala…

Wait a second, let’s just go with White dudes for Harris

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- Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  You ever see the show Modern Family? I want a new show starring the husband from that show, about a wholesome totally not racist white guy who goes about life COMPLETELY oblivious to how his actions are percieved by other people.
  
  Almost like a not racist version of Mr Magoo.
  
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  - finley@lemm.ee ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    that could be any of the 4 husbands on that show
    
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- egonallanon@lemm.ee ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
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AFKBRBChocolate@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
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.

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- dogsnest@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Never, ever, ever respond, even reverse-uno.
  Otherwise, you’ve helped them.
  
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- curbstickle@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Just to note - white dudes for Harris is a real group.
  
  I still wouldn’t click the link, I’d go direct to their site if there was an interest there, just noting that it is a real group.
  
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  - AFKBRBChocolate@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Yep, I looked them up just to see but, like you said, the fact that it exists doesn’t mean anything. I didn’t find anything (good or bad) associated with that phone number - could be spoofed.
    
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- lars@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  There’s no “Report Junk” on iOS Messages unless it’s an email address texting you.
  
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  - ccunning@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Every message I have received on my iPhone from someone not in my contacts has this after that latest message:
    
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  - WeirdGoesPro@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    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.
    
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  - AFKBRBChocolate@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Really? I wonder why. Though I’ve always assumed the one on my phone was from Verizon, not the app or the OS.
    
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  - JoShmoe@ani.social ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    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.
    
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PaupersSerenade@sh.itjust.works ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Image Got 9 in one day. If they include a name it’s never mine

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- Korne127@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  What the fuck… how can people in the US live with something like that? And how does this not massively hurt her chances?!
  
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  - MajorHavoc@programming.dev ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    
    how can people in the US live with something like that?
    
    We’ve had a number of deeply corrupt individuals in charge of our federal department means to police this sort of thing.
    
    And how does this not massively hurt her chances?!
    
    Even odds are that it’s meant to.
    
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  - tburkhol@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    The politicians made sure to exempt themselves from all the consumer protection, anti-fraud laws. They live in bubbles where their own political agendas are too important for limitations.
    
    But I suspect, because my brand new phone number gets a lot of political spam, that 1) a lot of people can’t live with it and change their numbers to escape or 2) a lot of it is recycled burner-phones, previously used to launder donations to fit legal donation limits. But it’s given me a personal rule to never make a donation from my real phone or allow my real phone to become associated with any political process.
    
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  - droans@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Most don’t get that many. OP is likely targeted in the systems. My guess is that he votes often in the primaries and has shown interest elsewhere, like by signing up for communications or donating to or volunteering for campaigns.
    
    I just checked my spam and I’ve received four political texts in July.
    
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  - Blackmist@feddit.uk ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Is that actually official campaign stuff?
    
    At least some of that looks like spam designed to get “donations” that they just keep. Saw plenty of that around COVID.
    
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- SendMePhotos@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Use their numbers to sign up for stuff
  
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- lars@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Omg this is essentially me too. I just waited to lose my patience until this White Guys incident.
  
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- ms_lane@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  Donate to a political party.
  
  No. Never. Not Ever.
  
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TheGiantKorean@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I have a Pixel. I did not realize how bad this gets until work made me take an iPhone as my work phone. Holy hell. No amount of “Delete and report as junk” helps.

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- boonhet@lemm.ee ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Your country is crazy.
  
  I get maybe 3-4 spam messages a year and those are all scams, not ads, much less political ads (which I don’t think would even be legal)
  
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  - Halosheep@lemm.ee ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I have never once received one of these messages. Doesn’t happen to everyone.
    
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- Marketsupreme@lemm.ee ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Is the reason I dont ever see these because pixel hides these
  
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  - LogicalDrivel@sopuli.xyz ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Lately my Pixel cant even keep up with all of them and some are slipping through. Going into the spam folder is almost comical.
    
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  - MangoPenguin@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Yeah google messages has pretty good automatic spam detection, you can check the spam folder and see how many are in there.
    
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- littlewonder@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Spam features will keep me in the Pixel lineup’s cold grasp for eternity. I could never deal with OP’s notification tray.
  
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JackiesFridge@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Respond to nothing. Block everything.

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Nurse_Robot@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
God damn I love my Google phone. Every once in a while I check my call logs and spam text folder to see the hundreds of calls and texts it screens for me, without any notifications. It’s nice

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- BassTurd@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  It is easily the most important feature on my phone. The call screening and spam blocking is unparalleled. I don’t think I have had anything blocked that shouldn’t be, and it maybe messes up 5 or less times a year.
  
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- droans@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Call screening is honestly one of the best features to ever come to a phone. I really wish this could be added to every handset.
  
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  - littlewonder@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Yes! I set it to auto-screen any number that’s not in my contacts. It’s wonderful and I haven’t noticed any frustration from legitimate callers who go through the screening.
    
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Binette@lemmy.ml ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
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?

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- lars@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  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?
  
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  - ivanafterall@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Phone number appears to be (202) 894-8505, URL is whitedudes4harris.org/call9
    
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possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
“White dudes for Harris”

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Para_lyzed@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
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 don’t reply to opt out, 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.

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- Reverendender@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Pretty sure they won’t keep messaging me after I blocked their number and reported spam
  
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  - Para_lyzed@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    True, but if you get a new phone and your blocked numbers list is reset, or they send messages from a different number, then you could get them again in the future. I see this often because there are multiple people in that campaign that will all reach out to people with their own phone numbers. Opting out prevents that for legitimate donor campaigns (you are removed from the list for all of the solicitors associated with that campaign), but obviously not for scams. There is no harm in doing both, and I would recommend that (it’s what I do).
    
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  - vanontom@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I thought this was the best course of action, too. It was not. New numbers, seemingly infinite, keep spamming me. They are political, seemingly real Democrat-linked entities (but I’m skeptical because this spam is obviously a brain-dead idea). After replying “STOP,” they definitely slowed.
    
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  - adespoton@lemmy.ca ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Blocking numbers is only useful against actual consumer numbers where there’s a real person with a SIM card on the other end.
    
    Bulk calls/texts use number pools, and those pools don’t tend to be reused after a campaign; they’re just rented out to someone else.
    
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- vk6flab@lemmy.radio ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  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.
  
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  - Para_lyzed@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    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 or endorsed by a party.
    
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thesmokingman@programming.dev ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
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.”
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fine_sandy_bottom@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

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.

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- Etterra@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  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.).
  
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eramseth@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Every 4 years.

First_time_?.jpeg

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- lars@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Remarkably, yeah. I always get a little political text spam, but since early ’24 it’s been harassment.
  
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  - ayyy@sh.itjust.works ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Seems more like…Harrissment
    
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bquintb@midwest.social ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
welcome to the election season in the United States.

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skuzz@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
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.

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- Zess@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  It’s still spam and I’ll report it and block the number every time.
  
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- ICastFist@programming.dev ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  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.
  
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  - skuzz@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    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.
    
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Wispy2891@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
White dudes for Harris? This name seems a parody

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- capital@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  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?
  
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  - ms_lane@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Whatever happened to UNITY?
    
    Oh that’s right, Occupy Wall St. happened.
    
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- AutistoMephisto@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  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.
  
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setsneedtofeed@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
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blackbrook@mander.xyz ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
when it started getting really bad, i started replying stop. it maybe made things a little better but i still get a fair number if these (including this one). it definitely hasn’t made it any worse.

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- Passerby6497@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I’ve had decent luck replying with goatse with trump’s face shopped in, gotten multiple ‘i’m just going to unsubscribe you’ messages back hahaha.
  
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- sanguinepar@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Isn’t there a risk that the number you reply to might be a premium rate number, and replying at all might land you a big charge?
  
  I don’t get many of these types of messages, but I always just block them.
  
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  - blackbrook@mander.xyz ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I guess I’ll find out. I have wondered if any of these are just scams.
    
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generichate1546@lemmynsfw.com ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I keep getting texts from Donald for some reason

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- BigPotato@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I’m getting both! And I’ve never been a centrist in my life!
  
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ayyy@sh.itjust.works ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
US politicians not making literally everything about race challenge [IMPOSSIBLE]

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corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

till

emails

Mildly infuriating, indeed.

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- lars@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Reminds me how I didn’t know that ’til and till are both words until way too recently
  
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LesserAbe@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
My wife gets a ton of political texts intended for me. Best I can tell is because her cell phone number is under my name with T-Mobile. (Used to be a Sprint account before the merger) I’ve never used her number to sign up for anything under my name. So it would seem either Sprint sold it or an employee leaked it or something.

I have a Google voice number and pretty much don’t get political texts. The Google voice number rings a T-Mobile prepaid phone, that number doesn’t get political texts either.

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irotsoma@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
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.

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- Maggoty@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  They already have the number. PACs pass around number lists all the time. Sending a stop message every now and then is the cost of your phone not blowing up during campaign season.
  
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kometes@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Look, no campaign wants to annoy voters but also they want everyone to be contacted. Just respond with “STOP” and it will stop. Unfortunately, every campaign buys your data so nearly ever campaign will send you a text.

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StaySquared@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
LOL

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- ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.net ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  As a Democrat, I agree.
  
  But I kinda want to see how deep this goes.
  
  DudesWhoLikeFriesInTheirMilkshakes4Harris .com
  
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  - ouRKaoS@lemmy.today ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I’m in one of these oddly specific groups, and I feel both validated and paranoid.
    
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  - StaySquared@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    lmao.
    
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- kmartburrito@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Haha like this?
  
  Apparently everyone’s doing it
  
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  - StaySquared@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Indeed. But worst.
    
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- CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Nah, it’s a pretty relevant distinction within American life.
  
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  - Cryophilia@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    The only people who think race don’t matter is people who exclusively interact within the same race.
    
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cabron_offsets@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I just got this same bullshit.

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Shelbyeileen@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
The scammers always have a field day with elections because so many people are too politically charged to do research. By LAW, every US campaign has to have the actual name of the person who’s sending texts and if it doesn’t, you know it’s a scam. If you have T-Mobile, you can forward the text to 7726 (SPAM) and they’ll shut it down. Never ever respond to these. Don’t even say “STOP” because then they’ll know it’s a number connected to a real human and not a business… a human they can scam.

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Agent641@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I would be afraid its a trap, like clicking the link might add me to a radical MAGA hit-list or something.

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mctoasterson@reddthat.com ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
This is what dying of cringe in text message format looks like.

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YurkshireLad@lemmy.ca ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I keep getting emails from some republican Colorado group and I don’t even live in the US!

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dohpaz42@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Good thing my browser doesn’t keep cookies, or that might’ve leaked my Google info. But here’s what the link goes to:

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