- 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- I hesitate to reply “stop” because I don’t want them to know this is a live number (is my instinct here outdated/inapplicable?)
Hey there we’re the krazy kaucasians for Kamala…
Wait a second, let’s just go with White dudes for Harris
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.
that could be any of the 4 husbands on that show, to varying degrees. you’ll have to be more specific.
The white one
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
Is the reason I dont ever see these because pixel hides these
Lately my Pixel cant even keep up with all of them and some are slipping through. Going into the spam folder is almost comical.
Got 9 in one day. If they include a name it’s never mineWhat the fuck… how can people in the US live with something like that? And how does this not massively hurt her chances?!
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.
Use their numbers to sign up for stuff
Omg this is essentially me too. I just waited to lose my patience until this White Guys incident.
Respond to nothing. Block everything.
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.”
Every 4 years.
First_time_?.jpeg
Remarkably, yeah. I always get a little political text spam, but since early ’24 it’s been harassment.
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.Pretty sure they won’t keep messaging me after I blocked their number and reported spam
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.
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.
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.
“White dudes for Harris”
I consider myself lucky because I can’t recall ever getting any messages like that from either side. Closest I’ve come is mail for local candidates for non-presidential office.
till
emails
Mildly infuriating, indeed.
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.
Filters are your friend. If this is a text message, there are SMS apps which can filter messages by content.
I block all unknown numbers.
