You are involved in some serious work, monotonously staring at your computer, just then your phone beeps, you wish to avert your eyes but then, self loathingly, look down thinking or hoping rather, that it’s a friend wanting to meet up, instead you find a junk text sent by some spammer who wants you to engage with it by clicking on the link, sending some details or something of the sort, and get you into trouble. Of course, it makes you want to tear your head apart.
These spam messages sent through bots have become a part of life, but you can do something to avoid it. Just like spam phone calls, you can block these spam calls with some tricks.
Yes, you might be able to avert these bot texts better than the bot calls but that doesn’t mean that they are not as worse. Based on your network plan you might be charged for receiving messages, so that’s already a financial burden. But that is just the beginning, from here things can get a lot worse if you’re not cautious enough.
Clicking on the links in these messages can make way for bugged files and viruses on your device. If you provide any of your details your data is at risk. Plus, once you have, even involuntarily replied to any of these texts, your number is circulated even further and then these spam messages keep flowing in even more. But don’t worry. We have got you covered.
Let’s look at the different ways we can avoid these spam messages.
Do Not Respond
Generally, these scam messages come with an initial text asking to reply with a “Stop” to stop them from sending any further messages but generally, the only purpose it serves is of confirming to the scammer the validity of your number and thus only ends up increasing the flow of these messages. So unless it’s from a company that you’re sure is not trying to scam you, never reply to these bot-texts.
Block Phone Numbers
If the disturbance is too much, just block the number from where the messages have been coming. Although this doesn’t work much because spammers mostly keep changing numbers. So you could get the messages from the same spammer even after blocking them.
Report the Spammer
You can report every bot text to your mobile carrier simply by forwarding it to a specific number. For this just copy the whole message and send it to 7726. (SPAM)
Filter Out Spammers on Android
If you have an android phone, you can easily disable all the identified spam messages. Just go to settings and then to spam protection, then turn on the Enable spam protection switch. Now you will be alerted if any message is suspected to be spam.
Filter Out Spammers Through Mobile Carriers
Some blocking and filtering tools are provided by most top US mobile carriers. They mostly are tuned to look for spam phone calls but they also block the numbers that they suspect are delivering fake messages.
Call Filter by Verizon blocks all the bot calls and messages. There is a free version, but the premium version costs $2.99 for a single line or $7.99 a month for three or more lines. T-Mobile offers Scam Shield, which is a collection of free services to detect, block, and mislead spam and scam callers. It has a caller id feature too which is for the numbers which aren’t on your contact list.
The carriers also use some technology on the back end to trace and block the spam messages just like the email providers do. If you’re looking for some tougher apps you can check out some other third-party apps.
Nomorobo
Available for both iOS and Android, Nomorobo costs $1.99 a month or $19.99 a year, but there is a free version that you can try for a few weeks. It does both, scanning your phone calls and your messages and blocks the spammed ones. Nomorobo also uses the SMS filtering feature that iPhone introduced in the iPhone 11 to block all the spam tests.
For this, first, install Nomorobo on your phone, then open Settings, go to Messages, and then Unknown and Spam. Then turn on the switch for Nomorobo in the section of SMS filtering. Now the potential spam text messages will be blocked and the sources would be shown by the app.
As you open the Messages app, you'll find your texts organized in two tabs: iMessage & SMS and SMS Junk. You will receive no notifications of all the messages in this junk file although you can venture in and look inside.
You need to set Nomorobo as your default app on Android. Then Noborobo identifies your phone number through a text message and now you can select how you’ll like your spam texts and calls to be identified.
Robokiller
RoboKiller costs $3.99 a month or $29.99 a year and works on both android and iPhone. To determine that the text is spam or not the app looks at all messages and identifies the phone numbers, attachments, and other elements of the text.
After you’ve installed RoboKiller on your iPhone, open Settings then go to Messages, and then Unknown & Spam. Now switch to Robokiller in the space in the section of Sms filtering. Like Noborobo, Robokiller too moves the suspicious messages to the junk folder where you can review the messages later.
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