Storytime: Your phone buzzes. You start to feel just a tad excited. Could a friend be wanting to tell you a new development in her life? Could it be your new fling finally texting you back? No. It’s some random 10 digit number telling you how candidate A wants to control your city, state, or country with their radical X policies. Reply “STOP” to stop. Sound familiar? Well, I’m going to show you how to put an end to those texts for good.
“Isn’t it illegal for these spammers to robo text lots of people?” Yes, sending unsolicited robo texts is illegal, but the FCC allows unsolicited texts as long as an actual person enters the number. This loophole has given rise to dialing farms: companies that pay people to dial each number. Every other part of the process can be automated. These farms can use many different numbers, so blocking the numbers will not work.
The process is simple, we just need to set up an app to auto-reply “STOP” when you get a text from a text dialing farm. After that response, that organization cannot text you again through that dialing farm until you reply “START”, or a similar term to resume getting the messages. See the steps below.
Step 1:
Download “SMS Auto Reply Text Messages / SMS Autoresponder” from the Google Play Store.
This app will prompt you to change some settings. This is normal and necessary for it to work properly.
Step 2:
Open the app, and tap “Add / Edit”.
Step 3:
Tap the circle with the plus sign symbol to add a new AutoReply, enter “SPAM” for the name and hit “save”
Step 5:
Type “STOP” in the message box, and hit the “Set Time” button.
Step 6:
Set the appropriate dates and time that you would like the app to work. I would suggest stopping on election day. Hit “Save”.
Step 7:
Enable the Autoresponder slider, tap the three horizontal bars in the top left, and tap “Settings”.
Step 8:
Enable “Reply only to non-contacts” and “Ignore short numbers”. Legitimate automated texting services usually use short numbers and you probably don’t want to reply “opt-out” every time someone that you know texts you. (Or maybe you do. I don’t know your life.)
Step 8:
Sit back and relax while your phone to automatically opts-out from every political campaign.