Block the 1-410-100 messages

Hi @TimPicks the idea, from me at least, is that AT&T should do more than rely on a 3rd party app to protect it's customers.

Most of us are paying a good amount of money to use their services and should be able to do so without this barrage of spam and garbage which they are passing along.

What if this continues to worsen ? Don't you think the telephone companies should have some responsibility or plan to help with this ?

Totally agree. We shouldn't have to pay for a third party app to solve what is inherently AT&T's problem. However, that's where we are, and at least WideProtect is only $3 forever. If AT&T offered a similar product it would be $7...a month. :)

1000% Agree... Wideprotect is a great choice and I have had good luck with it. So far killed all the 100, 200 spam mentioned here...

As soon as I complied with AT&T demand to take their free phone I started getting spam texts from 410 area code. They come in numerical sequence so I block the future numbers and I don't receive the texts - Great BUT MY PREPAID MINUTES ARE ARE STILL GETTING TAKEN 20 CENTS FOR EACH TEXT  I DO NOT RECEIVE.    I presume that leaving AT&T will not solve the problem as AT&T has now fouled my phone number that I've had for years.   There are several texts a day so this is very expensive to keep funding nothing but SPAM TEXTS as I rarely use my phone.  I keep it handy for family and emergency contact.  This needs to stop.   

Also, since the texts don't arrive to my phone there is no record of the calls there, so I need to log into the online AT&T prepaid which is a whole other issue.  Every time I go to the website is says the login info is incorrect and I need to reset my pin.  I do that and the very next time I go to log in I need to reset the pin again and again and again.     Sometimes this is not even an option - there is an alert that I just can't log in for now try again later.    I've had AT&T prepaid for almost 15 years and it has been great until now.  Why this new business model of driving their customers crazy till they have no choice but leave.   If I call 611 there is no option to talk to a person, every route tells me to go to the website and again reset pin to do that and on the website there is no option to get help with this either.   

And just realizing I'm posting this to a forum on the AT&T website that only lets me access occasionally, so who knows when I will be lucky enough to log in again to see if their is a response that can help with this problem.  

Don’t bother reporting it. I have been getting the messages for two months and every day report it and yet I keep getting the spam. They don’t care

Don’t bother reporting it. I have done this for two months with the same problem and every day I keep reporting it and nothing changes. They simply don’t care. Congress. Needs to change something so we can lock these people up and not just slap them with a fine when they’re caught. It is straight harassment

There is a solution: give each recipient control.  Stevie Wonder can see that any text message arriving via the gateway THAT ALSO CONTAINS A HYPERLINK and is coming from a new and never before seen sender address, is 90% or better chance of being spam.

I don't want **any texts** via the gateway that contain hyperlinks.  I should have that level of control over my individual phone account.

Stop making excuses for ATT.  Hyperlinks in texts via the gateway from never before seen senders, is low hanging fruit. They can stop it.  They should only allow hyperlinks via the email to text gateway from vetted senders.  Or they should strip or disable the hyperlink.  Removing a live, clickable link from these texts will severely cramp the spammer's style and remove much of their motivation to send them in the first place.

@JefferMC sez, “If we can't get posters to search long enough to find the existing threads, why do we think it's so easy for the carriers to determine which texts are valid and which ones are not (especially without reading them, which would have every privacy advocate up in all kinds of arms).”  Oh I don’t know.  Because posters are just regular people, and carriers (AT&T) employ professional software engineers?  Read @stealth172 s post above.  S/he, like many posters before suggest the very same solution: “give each recipient control”.  I’d bet nearly all the posters here would be happy with just a simple option to reject any 410 message “THAT ALSO CONTAINS A HYPERLINK” as stealth suggests.  The continued deafness to such perfectly good solutions is what convinces me that the naysayers must have some hidden agenda.  Sorry but that’s just how your rIdiculous objections to giving the recipients filter  control strike me.

But legitimate SMS messages may also contain hyperlinks.  Sigh.

Too bad!