Originally published at: FCC finally moves against those Car Warranty robocalls | Boing Boing
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Cool. Now about those letters.
Used to get them at least once a month.
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Now do the folks who send spam to my SMS via email address, which (as far as I can figure out) cannot be blocked on my phone because there’s no phone number.
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I sometimes send a sweary response, then block 'em (iphone lets you, just blocked one yesterday).
Anyway, all calls from Sturgis, Warren and Flat Rock, Michigan are spam, I never answer any. They’re mostly car warranty and Direct TV scams, but sometimes they are IRS or SSI scams (I search phone numbers before I decide to answer since the bulk of these come in during work hours). “Your social security number has been frozen.” Uh, huh, sure, 'cause that’s totally how that works. 
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We get these all the time, long after my late mom gave up our car. My BF is mobile but has never used our landline as his number.
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I’ve been getting increasing numbers of text messages that purport to be addressed to someone else, e.g. “Hi gene, are we going golfing next week”. (my name’s not gene). I think they are looking for responses so they can identify active text numbers. And just constant texts from “local investors” who want to buy my house for cash.
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I had fun with one of the spammers one day when I had little to do.
She said she was calling from “Dealership Services” and wanted the make and model of my car. I asked which dealer. She ignored me and I pressed. “All of them” was her response. (Started getting excited thinking the one and only Sarah “Barracuda” was calling me personally!) She kept insisting I tell her the make & model of my car. I said that if she was calling from the dealer, she would know. We went back and forth for a while. I said I didn’t think they would cover my car. She asked once more for the make and model. I said, “OK, it’s a 1929 Model T. How much for that extended warranty?” She finally gave up. Called me a vile name and hung up.
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I bought an Ooma (VoIP phone) in the oughts, and I wondered if anyone knows how to make it or Premium do something desirable? I think they managed to catch us in a mood of comeuppance from the free NO FILTER ($0 monthly lol; now $7 in monthly fees to roll in 911 service and other odd bags, premium’s another $10 (bag o’ knobs?)) and might have us under Legendary Disconnect since May. Free calls to Puerto Rico might not really be for me, more’s the tragedy.
Too lazy to make a recursive transformer (AI) so I can just use whatever MITEL looks attractive (or deprecated $LTC kit?,) but that could change. Hugging Face land line emu, wai wai.
So, AT&T (and Verizon) have a reporting service for SMS messages; AT&T’s responder was recently modified to include phrasing for email addresses, but I imagine the one verizon uses works the same way:
forward the message to 7726 (SPAM); the auto-responder will ask you for the number or email address it came from. After that, block the contact using the phone’s tools for doing so.
AT&T will also let you (via a call to customer service) disable the email to SMS gateway feature for your number if you don’t use it, or the deluge of email to SMS spam is just not your slice of cake. Have the support rep (or their supervisor) search for “Article 446389” on their internal documentation system; it’s something that Advanced Tech Support has to do. This will give the rep instructions on how to disable email on SMS and email on MMS their their internal tools for your number. (this is from their forums; I don’t know if it’s still accurate or not, though.)
As far as verizon? I have no idea, the line I have with them is a corporate line and is managed by my employer.
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