Spam texts are becoming an increasing problem. Exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic as scammers sought to take advantage of the situation, spam texts have soared by 55% in 2021 compared to the previous year, with 47 billion spam texts having been sent.
They come in the form of fraudulent messages about overpaid tax, deliveries for items you never ordered, winning bogus prizes, and countless other scams.
While some might argue that spam texts are less of a problem than nuisance calls as they’re easier to ignore. It’s predicted that robotexts will lead to the loss of $101million in 2021 alone.
So, how to stop spam texts? Fortunately, technology is constantly evolving to address this ongoing nuisance. In this guide, we’ll walk you through your options.
Spam texts broadly fall into two categories:
Text spam from legitimate companies is often caused by customers unwittingly giving permission to organizations to use their data for marketing purposes when they buy a product or service.
Scammers, on the other hand, will usually buy bulk data lists of names and phone numbers to target. The scary part is that all the data they need is available to buy legally from data brokers.
What is a data broker? A data broker is a business that profits from selling information it has gathered about individuals. It’s a highly lucrative industry that is currently thriving, as well as being notoriously difficult to regulate. In fact, there are thousands of data broker companies currently operating around the world – with some of the largest based in the United States. And, because they largely use public data they are not acting illegally. Data Brokers will gather their data from many locations such as social media or public records – and might use spam and robo texts to confirm that a phone number is active. The extent of information that they gather on individuals is very wide-reaching. For example, they might know the names of your children or know how much you earn. Data Brokers then sell this information onto other companies who might then target you for marketing based on specific traits. In some cases, your data might fall into the wrong hands and leave you vulnerable to fraud.
The biggest giveaway that a text is fraudulent is if it relates to something that you are not aware of, such as a FedEx parcel that you were not expecting, or a bank that you’re not a customer of.
Aside from that, here are other red flags to look out for:
Never click on a link or call a number that’s provided within suspicious-looking text-messages. Instead, look up the phone number on the website of the organization it’s purporting to be from, then phone that number to inquire about the contents of the text message.
Have you ever received unsolicited text messages and attempted to stop them by replying with the word: UNSUBSCRIBE or STOP? Well, we hate to be the bearer of bad news but you might have actually made yourself more prone to further spam texts in the future.
While opening a text is unlikely to be malicious, responding to it is a definite no-no. By replying to a scam SMS, you’re confirming that your number is active. This means they are likely to contact you in the future and might even sell your details onto other companies who might spam you later down the line.
Reporting scam texts can help law enforcement agencies and phone carriers to clamp down on fraudsters.
It’s quick and easy to do this:
This service is free and available to use across all major carriers.
If, on the other hand, you receive the message via a messaging app such as WhatsApp, you can also report the spam message directly through the platform. In this case, you can simply open up the options bar and press Report Contact. You can also go one step further by blocking the number.
Reporting Spam Texts – Our Verdict This isn’t going to stop you from receiving robo texts in the future, but everyone should report spam texts when they receive them, that way carriers can quickly identify phone numbers committing fraud and shut them down. See it as your civic duty. Protection rating: 1 out of 5
Both Android and iPhone devices come with built-in spam filters.
In-Built Spam Filters – Our Verdict This can provide protection against spam texts, but it’s based on numbers that are reported to carriers, so new numbers being operated by scammers are unlikely to be detected by these settings. Protection rating: 3 out of 5
Mobile carriers also provide spam detection and filtering services. These have been developed more for spam calls, but can still offer protection against spam texts. All the major carriers offer free and paid services, which are delivered via mobile apps:
Carriers’ Spam Protection Services – Our Verdict These settings are somewhat effective against the rise of spam texts. However, the services are far from perfect. Firstly, their technology is currently more focused upon spam calls and what’s more, there are gaps in their detection systems. Protection rating: 3 out of 5
If the service provided by your carrier or phone OS isn’t providing a good enough solution, then you could consider using a third-party app.
Here are some leading apps currently on the market:
Third Party Apps – Our Verdict There are certainly more third-party apps that are specifically geared at tackling the issue of robotexts. And, the developers behind these platforms are constantly updating their systems in order to achieve the best level of protection. However, scammers are also coming up with new methods to access your phone. This means that the apps can provide a large degree of protection but some unwanted texts might slip through. Protection rating: 4 out of 5
The major shortcoming with all of the above options is that they don’t tackle the root cause of the problem: how scammers and robotexters get your phone number in the first place.
Huge amounts of personal identifiable information (PII), including full names, addresses, and phone numbers are available to legally purchase from data brokers. This is a primary source of data for scammers to build their text lists from.
What’s more, this is how scammers can trick you into believing they’re contacting you from your bank or other organization, by having a lot of information about you.
Therefore, in order to stop scammers from getting access to this data, the most effective action you can take is to remove your PII from data brokers. There are two ways to do this:
Option 1: Do it yourself
All data brokers must remove your personal data from their databases if you request this. We’ve created step-by-step guides on how to do this. The problem though is that there are countless data brokers active in the market, so removing all of your data from these platforms, not to mention your family members’ data, is extremely fiddly and time-consuming.
What’s more, this isn’t a one-time activity. Your personal data is continuously being added to data broker platforms, so you need to be constantly monitoring and removing this.
Option 2: Get us to do it for you
Here at DeleteMe, we’re the experts at removing your personal data from the internet. We’ve completed over 29 million data broker opt-out removals since 2010 on behalf of our customers.
As soon as you sign up with us, our team of privacy experts uses sophisticated AI to identify then scrub your personal data from all data broker platforms and other online sources of PII. And once your data is removed, scammers can no longer buy your personal data to then harass you with nuisance calls. We then monitor and remove any new personal data that’s added to these platforms, ensuring your PII stays off the internet.
Our plans start from just $10.75 per month.
As stated at the beginning of the guide, there is no perfect solution.
But as with any problem, it’s always best to treat both the symptoms and the cause. In which case, using your phone OS or carrier’s free service offering, combined with removing your data from data brokers, could provide a good all-round solution.
Or if the service provided by your carrier or phone’s OS isn’t blocking nuisance texts well enough, then subscribing to a third-party app could be your next option, while continuing to ensure your data isn’t available via data brokers.
DeleteMe is our premium privacy service that removes you from more than 30 data brokers like Whitepages, Spokeo, BeenVerified, plus many more.
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