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Comment by ericbarrett | Hacker News Reader

I have replied STOP to many of these and it has reduced the flood, but I still get several a day. The bot's reply to "stop" is always some variant of:

> You have successfully been unsubscribed. You will not receive any more messages from this number.

"From this number" is clearly a legalese parsing of some law or regulation and the end result is that you cannot truly opt out. Infuriating.

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STOP has worked more for me with Dem begging texts, less so with Repub, but not completely with either. I've switched to sending them troll like messages back, which also results in the same unsubscribed message, but perhaps makes it clear I will not give money to politicians.

I think the more reasonable explanation is that there actually are hundreds of independent entities sending this sort of political spam.

That's exactly it. I donated to a candidate once (literally once, ever) and the party basically passes my phone number around to every PAC and campaign organization under the sun.

This stuff must be effective or else they wouldn't do it. On the other hand, it seems like a good way to discourage repeat donors. Why would I donate any money if the result is going to be endless texts and emails?

Heck, maybe they should offer a "premium donation" where you pay extra to not get on these lists, analogous to a no-ads streaming plan.

I'm pretty sure by responding you're just letting them know it's an active number. Could be wrong though.

For commercial and political texters in the U.S. there is quite a bit of FCC regulation. For scammers, obviously that doesn't matter. Probably a sign of the times that people can't tell the difference anymore, though

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