I prefer my life as a godless heathen, thankyaverymuch.

October 7, 2007 12:59 PM

How can I stop spammy, religious propoganda text messages?

Today I have recieved four of the same message texted to me from the email address [e-mail]. It reads thus:

"(You gotta hear this) Call 641-715-3900 then ext. 21657 wow, reality check. After you listen to it, send it, you know someone who needs to hear it."

This is bugging the hell out of me because 1.) I don't like unsolicited text messages or advertising and 2.) I *especially* don't like unsolicited religious text messages. It isn't from a website I've put my phone number in because the rest of my family has been recieving them all morning too (one woke me up, by the way, which is part of the reason I'm angry.) I looked for an option to block it in my phone (a blackberry 7250), but I think it's a bigger problem than that since my parents are recieving them too.

What can I do about these unsolicited texts? I'm on Verizon, for what it's worth.

posted by Glitter Ninja to grab bag (3 comments total)

from lifehacker comment section on a post about spam text messages:

"VText.com for Verizon users allows you to specify texting preferences. Block individual emails, domains, texts from email address completely. Helped me out a lot when I got a number whose previous owner was johnny-text-spam-ho. No matter the provider, replying to the text with "UNSUBSCRIBE" usually does the trick."
posted by sharkfu at 1:06 PM on October 7, 2007

Beware - one of the less amusing aspects of this kind of scam is that they tend to use "premium" message "services", ie, charge you stupid amounts of money for texting to them and receiving texts from them, and in your particular case, calls to that phone number is probably charged at something ridiculous per minute.
posted by aeschenkarnos at 2:42 PM on October 7, 2007

I found some interesting information about Area Code 641:

"Another notable feature of Area Code 641 is the presence of large number of calling-card and conference service providers operating in this area. The way it works, when you call a number to rural area in 641 area code, your long distance provider have to pay the fee to the receiving telecom party the termination fee, maybe up to 8 cents a min. Using this arbitrage, some of the service providers operate here and require you to dial the 'local access number' in 641 area code. Large telecom providers are most hit with the costs for these so called free service providers. AT&T filed a suit to withhold these arbtrage payments (AT&T got a $2 million bill in a month). (March 2007)"

Searching for the number minus the extension turns up a large number of people using the same phone number, including a few podcast call in shows. So it looks like it's a call center of some sort with answering machines.
posted by aristan at 10:28 PM on October 7, 2007