How to get rid of SMS spam or advertising SMS messages. How to protect your mailbox and mobile phone from spam

How to get rid of SMS spam.

SMS spam. When up to 100 SMS messages can come in a day, it is unknown from whom, and it is completely unclear for what reasons. Advertising SMS constantly distracts you from unknown people, and sometimes at the worst time. SMS mailings are a reality and are gaining momentum and capital. Some SMS messages are quite harmless, especially if you respond to them. SMS SPAM becomes clear. It's time to fight. In order to stop the spam attack on your phone, a few simple rules and methods will come in handy.

Most of us have at least once in our lives wanted to avoid one or another call or SMS message. The simplest thing, if you own a smartphone or communicator, is to download an SMS and call filtering program.

That is, we enter into search engine“SMS filtering program” and based on your platform ( operating system) select and download to your taste and color.

Let's say you have ANDROID, that is, there are several options, for example - AntiSpamSMS, Easy Filter, Panda Firewall, AntiSpamSMS, etc. .

There is also a powerful and universal option - Dr.Web Mobile Security Suite. Cost from 390 rubles per year or even free from the Dr.Web website.

Supported Android OS: 1.5/1.6/2.0/2.1/2.2/2.3/3.0/3.1/3.2/4.0, S60, Symbian 9 and above + Windows Mobile 2003/2003 SE/5.0/6.0/6.1/6.5.

The word spam is usually associated with email spam, and how to deal with it is more or less clear: you can send it to “Spam”, you can set up filters, you can complain to the spammer’s hoster. However, spam is also extra waste paper in your mailboxes and unwanted SMS on your phone. And what to do with the latter is not always clear, although they are much more annoying, because, unlike email newsletters, SMS does not have an “unsubscribe” button. This is how I will tell you how to deal with SMS spam in this article.

How to unsubscribe from SMS spam.

Every self-respecting company gives the user the opportunity to voluntarily unsubscribe from the mailing list and will actually stop sending advertising messages. The conditions for unsubscribing should be specified by the company as additional information in the messages you receive, or specifically on the company’s website.

For example: “To unsubscribe from an unwanted service, send free SMS with the text “STOP” or “STOP” (case insensitive) to the number by which the service is provided.”

It is not possible to unsubscribe or you did not subscribe (actually SMS spam):

Use your operator's services mobile communications to block sending SMS from your phone to short paid numbers. As a rule, this service is provided free of charge. Operators have created special numbers and e-mails to process such complaints:

[email protected] or forward the received SMS to the toll-free number 1911 – MTS complaint service

www.spb.tele2.ru/help_complain.html or call 0611 - TELE2 complaint service

www.stopfraud.megafon.ru/feedback/ or call 0500 - complaint service to Megafon

*110*20#CALL - disabling the Chameleon service (advertising mailings) or by calling 0611 - Beeline complaint service

www.mtt.ru/mtt/def - by phone number you can find out the name of the operator in order to send a targeted complaint directly to the address

Or require the sender’s number to be included in the “black list” - if this service is activated, then it is possible to completely block paid SMS services of selected content providers (blocking incoming calls and messages).

And most importantly, never respond to such SMS! This could be a scam to steal money from your account.

Spam via bluetooth.

In many shopping centers, you will receive advertising via Bluetooth as soon as you walk inside. There is no need to take them in any case. And in order not to see them, it is best to simply turn on bluetooth only when you directly need it - to transfer files, for example. At the same time, you will save the battery. Another option is to prevent your Bluetooth device from being detected by other devices.

Who should I complain about spam to?

If you want not only to get rid of fraudulent SMS messages yourself, but also to punish spammers, then there are the following options:

Contact your telecom operator directly to complain about spam.

Contact the FAS (Federal Antimonopoly Service) of Russia, which supervises and controls compliance with advertising legislation

On the website www.fas.gov.ru/contact-fas/feedback/ or by email [email protected]. The complaint can also be delivered in person, sent by mail or fax.

Contact ROSKOMNADZOR.

Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technologies and mass communications- on the website 63.rsoc.ru/p7632/p8928/

In any case, to file a complaint you must provide specific information: the name and number of the sender, the text of the message and the time (sending/delivery). Be prepared to also provide your personal information: full name, place of residence, - for the reliability of the information sent and the opportunity to receive a notification.

In response to your sent message about the complaint, you should receive confirmation of acceptance of the request for action in the form of SMS, letter or registered letter.

If the case goes to court, mobile operators, advertising distributors or other spam senders will have to prove your consent to receive mailings, and not you yourself. Make sure “for peace of mind” that you really did not consent to spam mailing (for example, in the contract for receiving services).

How to avoid falling for the bait of spammers and scammers.

Some tips on how to avoid spam so you don’t have to unsubscribe from it:

do not enter your mobile number on suspicious sites

do not respond to provocative SMS sent from an unknown number unless you are firmly convinced of their authenticity

read contracts carefully mobile operators, where the conditions for sending you advertising messages are stated. By blindly signing up for such agreements, you are voluntarily signing up to receive spam.

How to get rid of SMS spam.

Every day, lovers of easy money are inventing new ways to withdraw money from gullible citizens. We've become so accustomed to email spam that it seems like it's always been there. But technology does not stand still, and over the past couple of years, spam calls to mobile phones have been gaining momentum. A sort of telephone salesman calls you unexpectedly and tries to sell you something completely unnecessary. In most cases, like email spam, they offer get-rich-quick schemes.

In this article I will describe my positive experience of blocking spam calls, which I first encountered about two years ago.

How to block unwanted calls on your smartphone

Fortunately, modern phone, or rather a smartphone, is a small computer and can, with the help software analyze and control incoming calls. All we need is to know the caller's number. And knowing it, decide whether to accept the call or not.

It’s good that there are no problems with identifying the caller’s number now, that’s it tariff plans mobile operators include the service of automatic caller ID.

Where do spammers call from?

I collected statistics on outgoing spammer numbers. I received 95% of unwanted calls from spammers from Moscow, only a few from St. Petersburg and a couple of times from abroad. That is, most of the spam numbers are from Moscow.

1. Blocking spam calls not from your contact list

The easiest way is to block unwanted calls- this is to limit incoming calls to contacts from your phone book. I described this method in detail in the article. That is, only those who are in your contact list will be able to reach you.

This method blocks spammers 100%, but it has drawbacks. You may miss an important call (from work, from college, from school) if the caller's number is not recorded in your phone.

The implementation of this locking method depends on the firmware. But fortunately it is present in many smartphones by default.

2. Block calls by area code

As I wrote above, most of the calls I received from spammers came from Moscow numbers. Therefore, it makes sense to block incoming calls starting with +7495 and +7499.

This method blocks spammers by 99%, but is not suitable for residents of the capital. After all, as I wrote above, someone can get a call from work, but the call will be blocked.

But if you don’t live in Moscow and you don’t have active contacts in the capital, then this method is ideal for you. I think spammers will not go to the regions any time soon and I will call residents of Saratov from city numbers in the same Saratov.

In the popular MIUI, a filter for incoming calls by prefix called “Black List” is included in the firmware. For others, you may need to install additional software.

3. Unwanted call blocking apps

If it is not possible to use the first two blocking methods, then you need to use additional programs. Which check the caller's number against known spam databases and block the call if necessary.

There are many programs for blocking unwanted calls for the Android operating system.

Android application "Don't pick up the phone"

My favorite was "Don't Pick Up the Phone." Here is her topic on w3bsit3-dns.com - http://4pda.ru/forum/index.php?showtopic=784364. Over the course of a year of using it, it missed only 2 calls from spammers, while more than 100 calls from 50 different numbers were blocked.

Android application “Kaspersky Who Calls”

In addition to the main function of blocking calls from spammers, this application contains a directory of numbers for businesses and organizations. And if the call is not from a spammer, but he is not in your notebook, then it is quite possible that you will see not only the caller’s number, but also the name of the organization to which this number belongs.

From the moment your SIM card is activated, your phone often receives a lot of unnecessary messages containing news and advertising. This is the so-called spam. And although this service is most often activated by default, it can be removed.

You will need

• Phone with SIM card.

Instructions

Articles and Lifehacks

Word " spam", as a rule, is associated with "extra" information that comes to email(advertising, offers to earn money, and so on), but today such information begins to clutter up not only email inboxes, but also mobile phones, filling them all with spam SMS mailings.

Let's try to figure out what to do if mobile phone spam comes and how to deal with it. Especially if spam SMS messages are so frequent that the signal that a message has been received simply infuriates the device owner.

What is spam and how does it get into your phone?

Based on statistical data, only 5% of the world's population can “boast” that they have never received spam, the remaining 95% can be considered “lucky” owners of this type of information, and advertising market specialists claim that 20-30% of the population respond to information that comes in such messages.

Spammers take “victim” numbers from profiles posted on the Internet (for example, data from social networks), as well as from questionnaires filled out in stores or ticket sales points. So you need to be careful when filling them out.

How to deal with spam coming to your phone

First of all, you should contact your friend and ask him to exclude the possibility of sending telephone advertisements to a specific number. But the operator will be able to disconnect the user only from the advertising that passes “through him” (legally, so to speak).

In addition, if it receives only spam SMS messages. Otherwise, it all depends on the spam filter settings in your mailbox.

Most spam SMS messages are sent by scammers from unknown phone numbers. What to do in such a situation? There are two options:

• You can again contact your operator and ask him to block all SMS that come from short numbers. The only caveat is that the operator may charge a monthly fee for providing such a service, but you can’t do that for your peace of mind.
• If spam comes from long numbers (which is lately not uncommon), then you can use the “black list” function, which is found in every phone today. SMS messages that will come from blacklisted numbers will simply not be shown to the user.

The telephone has become an integral part of our lives. Along with the telephone came telephone spam. Getting rid of SMS spam is quite difficult. An SMS can arrive at three in the morning or at the most inopportune moment when you are playing on your phone. Every person receives at least one spam SMS every month. There are several types of SMS messages.

1. The first type is clearly fraudulent SMS like, “Mom, urgently put some money on this phone. I'm in trouble. Then I’ll tell you everything.” Or another way - your card is blocked. To unblock, call the number xxxxx-xx-xx. Naturally, in this case, there is clearly no need to call or send SMS anywhere. These are scammers. The bank never asks you to give your PIN code for the card over the phone.
2. The second type of SMS messages is advertising. This could be an advertisement for a bank, store, etc. Those. wherever you left your phone number, you become the addressee to whom spam is sent. You should be quite careful when ordering goods online and entering special number, preferably not the main one. Even if you use an application like inTaxi, you may then receive SMS from taxi companies
3. The third type of SMS messages are messages that you have clearly subscribed to and need them. These could be SMS about transactions via credit card, account transactions, salary accrual messages.

The first two types of SMS are essentially spam. Let’s say one of these SMS messages comes to you every night at night and wakes you up. This is a message from the bank whose services you used before. But then you closed your accounts and stopped being a client of the bank.

Getting rid of spam SMS from someone else's bank

First, to stop sending, you need to call the bank and ask why SMS messages are coming and ask to turn off notifications. The bank may agree to the request and remove you from the mailing list.
You can call the number hotline or go to the bank office and write an application
But everything may not be so smooth - let’s say the bank says that it did not send the SMS. Then it’s time to turn to the SMS itself and look at the number from which the SMS came.
We need to find out who owns the number. To do this, call the operator’s support service and find out. Along the way, we ask for the contacts of this provider - we call and talk to him.
Please remove you from its database - according to the law on the protection of personal data, you do not consent to the processing of data. We are waiting for the result. It will most likely be positive. The bank may also send email spam. At one time, I received a letter every day from Telebank VTB24 regarding the revaluation of my currency - I had a currency card with a dollar account. Every day the dollar exchange rate changed and every time a letter arrived. Another option is when you cannot get rid of SPAM if you have an unpaid loan. For example, here are the messages Promsvyazbank sends.

What if nothing worked out?

There are options when everyone agrees to delete your number, but the SMS still continues to arrive. The following options are possible here - you have not found the addressee or the other side does not want or is unable to solve the problem. Then we try to complain.
If SMS is sent by some fraudulent provider, complain to the operator cellular communication for this provider.

What if it's your own fault?

Sometimes it happens that texting at three o'clock in the morning is your fault. You yourself activated the SMS notification service at the bank or did not disable a number of services.
You can turn off SMS notifications you don't need. For example, you need to register with the MTS operator on its website and gain access to your personal account.
Next, follow the link, log in - enter your username and password.
Next in your section - my subscriptions or in the services section we disable unnecessary ones.


Plus we call the operator and ask what SMS alerts I have enabled and ask them to turn them off.
Similarly with messages from the bank - go to the Internet bank and turn off the alert service. And enjoy the silence. The problem with short numbers at the moment quite relevant. Remember - if you enter a phone number, receive an SMS to your number and enter the number with the SMS somewhere on the Internet - you immediately get money. You pay for the service and money will be debited from you. To avoid getting scammed, you need to know the price of this SMS. For example, this is what the telecom operator MTS says about this.

Those. you can always find out the cost of SMS at short number. As you can see, you can also prohibit sending and receiving paid SMS from short numbers.
This is very important for children who may become victims of scammers or for people who do not know how to use a mobile phone.
If you were deceived, write a statement like this to the sender of the message:

From number xxxx, which belongs to your company, I received xx.xx.xxxxx numbers of SMS without a clear indication of the cost of this service. I was misled and xxx rubles were fraudulently debited from my phone balance +7xxxxxxxxxx.

Since the message misled me and did not contain information about the cost of services, there is reason to consider the actions of OJSC XXXX unlawful and contrary to the legislation of the Russian Federation.

I have drawn up a complaint indicating your fraudulent actions and sent it to MTS.

I ask you to return my money within xxx days. Otherwise, I will write a statement to the police and the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation

Last resort

If the problem is still not resolved, write to the FAS - go to the link www.fas.gov.ru/contact-fas/feedback/ or write to the mail [email protected].
We also write to ROSKOMNADZOR - via the link http://63.rsoc.ru/p7632/p8928/
You need to understand that the law on the protection of personal data is being violated in relation to you - they are using your data for mailing messages illegally.
When filing a complaint

1. We attach all the information about the SMS - full name, sender number, date and time (you can take a photo of the SMS and attach a link)
2. You will have to provide your details - full name and address.

The public service must respond - send you an SMS, a letter or a registered letter.