Blocking txt message ads on cell phones

Is there a way to block text message ads on my cell phone? I get them quite often and they irritate me.

I hope this hasn’t already been posted, I couldn’t find this thread if there is one.

[quote=“Captain Coconut”]Is there a way to block text message ads on my cell phone? I get them quite often and they irritate me.

I hope this hasn’t already been posted, I couldn’t find this thread if there is one.[/quote]

I’d like to know, too. I get one at least three times per week. It’s a disturbance. I’m signed up with CT. Who is your service provider?

What kind of ads are they? What numbers are they from? Post the numbers here so maybe people can help identify or compare them.

Most of the time though they are promotional text messages from your service provider, and you can call customer service to turn them off. If you have Chunghwa and online account access to emome.net you can remove the feature manually.

Two kinds of sms spam.

  1. Offers from your provider.
  2. BS from people your provider sold your number to, and who knows what other personal data.

One solution. Call your provider and shout at whoever answers the service line. When you start repeating yourself, demand to talk to their supervisor. Rinse and repeat. When you get up a few levels tell them straight out that if this shit doesn’t stop you will change providers. They will tell you it’s not coming from them and there isn’t anything they can do about it, but magically it will stop. It worked for me.

[quote=“catfish13”]Zhonghua and online account access to emome.net you can remove the feature manually.[/quote]100% of the spam texts I get are from emome.net. They are pretty annoying. But I don’t have an account with them. How can I stop this?

I’m using FarEasTone.

I called the help line and a polite, nice sounding girl told me that she couldn’t help, but also that the unwanted text messages should stop within 5 days. She also told me to keep the messages (I had always immediately deleted them) so as to give the numbers to her if I get any more of the damn messages.

Thanks RedWagon, I can’t believe I didn’t think of that. (But I didn’t have to shout at her though).

[quote=“redwagon”]Two kinds of sms spam.

  1. Offers from your provider.
  2. BS from people your provider sold your number to, and who knows what other personal data.

One solution. Call your provider and shout at whoever answers the service line. When you start repeating yourself, demand to talk to their supervisor. Rinse and repeat. When you get up a few levels tell them straight out that if this shit doesn’t stop you will change providers. They will tell you it’s not coming from them and there isn’t anything they can do about it, but magically it will stop. It worked for me.[/quote]
I wanted to do the same, only the number is in the wife’s name and she wouldn’t disgrace herself so on my behalf. She insisted on talking to the counterperson when we renewed and that worked just as well.

There must be a “block number” function the the phone somewhere. II haven’t been able to find one though.

I’d like to find a way to trash any message containing Chinese characters. For me, that’s what separates the wheat from the spam.

I get no more spam when visiting the payment office a year ago to upgrade to 3G.
I asked them to check if its possible to stop emome advertisement. They said no.
I asked them to check it over and few days after they called me and told me its turned off now (you have to say ‘cause a friend said its possible’). :slight_smile: Haven’t received any emome messages since then.
Them = Linsen Road Chunghwa Telecom service center in Hsinchu, which is one of the big “service centers”.
Of course I still get other rare advertisements, like the government warning against fraud, typhoons or floods and the local restaurant trying to tell me the soup is now 5 NT cheaper.
When working in France (at a ISP) we had a similar thing for our email advertisements.
The product code was called “NOSPAM” but only Level 2 hotline knew it (Level 1 was routed to a company in Algeria who’s job was usually just to explain to people how to type their password right).
Same goes with actually any services here, such as banks. i.e. They can do automatic recurring transfers even if the nerdy clerk claimed she never heard about it.

I used to get a lot of those messages, even after begging, pleading, cajoling with my CHT service reps to do something. I finally went in and spoke to them in person, showing them all the messages that I had saved. I sat at the counter for about 40 minutes, but they finally did something (I don’t know what), and I can’t remember getting another spam message after that. :idunno:

One of my more successful strategies is to keep asking for the personal phone number of the agent I’m talking to, and tell them I’m going to keep sending them reminder messages and call them at random times to bug them about turning the spam service off. Like many things here, once they realize that you’re not just going to give up and go away, they fold.

[quote=“redwagon”]Like many things here, once they realize that you’re not just going to give up and go away, they fold.[/quote]There are many unwritten rules like that. Like if the first customer of a store during the day asks for a discount - give him one. Otherwise the daily business turn over will be bad! In Japan its even more common that if you are persistent they listen to you. That’s why they also agree to work 24 hours if their boss is persistent enough…

[quote=“engerim”]
Same goes with actually any services here, such as banks. i.e. They can do automatic recurring transfers even if the nerdy clerk claimed she never heard about it.[/quote]

Yep, they really can, we managed to set up the gas, electric, phone, credit card payments all to the same account as the mortgage so making money management so much easier

If this is a problem, and you have a Nokia, there are filtering tools (they didn’t use to work properly) but updates to the system meant that they work (at least on my n79).

So I just simply blocked all the most common numbers that were spamming me. Result: almost no spam.

Check to see if your phone has a blacklist feature or spam filter (it might be called something else)…

It’s in Messages > Options > Settings > Text Filters > New Rule… and go from there.

Kenneth

Hey KenTaiwan98,

I have a Nokia 5800 but I can’t find anything like what you said. I’ll have to check into it some more, my OS and or GUI are pretty different from yours, but thanks for the suggestion.