If I Have To Press 'Block' One More Time, I Swear To God...
November 2, 2022 4:58 PM   Subscribe

Like many of you who live in the United States and have ever made a political donation, I've recently experienced a massive uptick in spam texts and phone calls. I also know that MetaFilter has some wonderful, brilliant analytical and statistical minds, so I thought I'd ask... How many times will I need to block spam U.S. phone numbers until I've blocked them all?

Some thoughts/parameters, but please adjust as needed. I'm making some pretty big assumptions that I have no idea if they are true, so go crazy.

---I define 'spam' as an unsolicited text or call.
---I live in the United States in the 206 area code.
---assume that when you block a number once, it remains blocked forever.
---assume that blocked numbers are portable as long as you keep the same phone number.
---assume that it is impossible to receive spam from a legitimate phone number owned by an individual or a business/organization.

Another way to think about this is how many 'burner' phone numbers exist in the United States i.e. numbers that nobody but spammers have claimed?
posted by dngrangl to Technology (11 answers total) 3 users marked this as a favorite
 
As the FCC notes, spammers can spoof to hide their actual number so the caller id that you see is not the number that they are calling from. So I think you answer would be all possible phone numbers minus the ones that are "legitimate", understanding that your last assumption that it is impossible to receive spam from a legit number is obviously false.
posted by metahawk at 6:12 PM on November 2, 2022 [2 favorites]


Your fifth assumption is incorrect; phone numbers can be spoofed pretty trivially.

A more efficient approach might be to adjust your phone settings it so that only phone numbers listed in your contacts can make your phone ring (I know this is possible on iPhones; I'm presuming Androids have similar features), but that doesn't prevent spammers from being able to spoof those phone numbers and ring right through.
posted by Pandora Kouti at 6:16 PM on November 2, 2022 [3 favorites]


A lot of the political texts you're getting also probably do come from real people. Text banking is big for GOTV.
posted by Lady Li at 6:33 PM on November 2, 2022 [10 favorites]


I find that instead of blocking the numbers, I just reply to each text with "Stop". Just that word. That seems to have cut down on things dramatically.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:55 PM on November 2, 2022 [6 favorites]


...I forgot to add that replying with "Stop" only works with the political solicitations.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:56 PM on November 2, 2022 [1 favorite]


I just finished building a text-based alerting system. Responding STOP (rather than blocking) really does work! STOP is generally handled at the carrier level, so once it is blocked it is blocked. STOP is also useful because the more people who respond STOP, the more a number is throttled.
posted by rockindata at 7:16 PM on November 2, 2022 [7 favorites]


Best answer: I mean, this is in no way practical advice, but...

A phone number has three parts; (XXX) YYY-ZZZZ has an area code (XXX) an exchange code (YYY) and then four digits to identify the number (ZZZZ).

There are 346 area codes assigned to US states; on one hand a few of these aren't activated yet, and on the other hand, there's 9 assigned to colonially occupied non-states. So about 350, assuming that Canadians and Caribbean citizens aren't unscrupulously calling you (not necessarily a great assumption, see 809 scam for details).

There seem like there should be a thousand exchange codes, from 000 to 999, but in reality it's more like 787; they can't start with a 0 or 1, and there are other exceptions like 911 or (sometimes) 555. The final four digits can be anything, so there's 10,000 possibilities there.

In principle, at one point, the exchanges were reserved geographically and by company; the three exchange code digits led to the same phone exchange (which is why if your phone number is (ABC) DEF-GHIJ you often get spam calls that pretend to start (ABC) DEF-####; that historically implied this was a caller from your neighbourhood). This is still the case here in Canada; if you call (403) 631-####, that is a number reserved for Telus users in Torrington, Alberta; population 306, come see the world famous gopher museum. So there's ten thousand phone numbers reserved for a few hundred people (actually there's twenty thousand; there's a second phone company serving Torrington with (825)-662-####) that in theory were locked away unless a spammer wanted to locate in Torrington. However, newer technology in the US means that these restrictions don't exist, and in any way, spammers can spoof whatever number they want.

So the space for numbers is 350 * 787 * 10000 = 2.75 billion numbers. There are about 330 million people in the US; there are a handful (mostly kids) without phones, but also plenty of multi-phone situations -- business numbers, cell vs. landline, etc. I don't know if the profusion of stand-alone wireless devices such as vending machines and parking meters use up cell numbers, but that's a fast growing segment. If you say 2 numbers per person as a ballpark, that's 660 million numbers, but still roughly 2.1 billion numbers left to block, unfortunately.
posted by Superilla at 7:21 PM on November 2, 2022 [7 favorites]


Stop works. I find myself typing it two or three times a day lately. I’m hoping the volume goes down after the election.
posted by Winnie the Proust at 7:48 PM on November 2, 2022 [1 favorite]


NGPVan manages a lot of D and Progressive campaigns. If you've donated to one you might have ended up in their database. You can email them and ask to be removed from their master list. This might help somewhat.
posted by grubby at 8:43 PM on November 2, 2022 [2 favorites]


Like many of you who live in the United States and have ever made a political donation,

Just to add, you didn't bring this on yourself by making a campaign donation. I have a phone number with a Georgia area code despite not having lived in GA for over 18 years. I registered to vote in Georgia when I was 18 but moved away before the first election I could vote in. I have no political history in Georgia, I have never made a campaign donation to the Republican party or any Republican candidate in any way shape or form. I just have a Georgia phone number. Herschel Walker will not get off my dick. I'm getting a text a day from the Herschel/Trump conglomerate.
posted by phunniemee at 4:58 AM on November 3, 2022 [9 favorites]


A lot of the political texts you're getting also probably do come from real people. Text banking is big for GOTV.

And FYI for those texts, you just want to use STOP because if you try to get cutesy with a putdown, the system won't automatically opt you out and you're at the mercy of the volunteer you just insulted to take you off the list.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 7:54 AM on November 3, 2022 [5 favorites]


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