I get very few spam emails or phone calls. No doubt due to a lot of blocking by service providers upstream of my device, but also due to me not being stupid about getting my info out there on sucker lists.
I get lots of texts that are partisan political solicitations. Sorta par for the course in our modern world. Other than those, I get very little txt spam. At least until a couple months ago.
Starting a couple months ago, so maybe Oct 2025 I began getting txt notices that I have been added to a group text conversation. The conversation always has a “caller ID” that’s a 5-digit seemingly random number. I can see that the other members of the group text convo are about 20 North American-format numbers from many different area codes. None of which are contacts known to my phone.
Unlike a conventional txt message, there’s no option on my Samsung Android to block the originating party. I can leave the convo followed by deleting my phone’s record of the convo, but that’s all I can do with it. And that’s what I’ve done w all of them.
These things show up about once every 3 days. Different caller ID each time as best I can remember, but same overall experience. I’ve never stayed joined to the convo long enough to receive any messages from it. I just get the contentless notice “You’ve been added to group text conversation 12345”
With all that lead-up:
Anyone else receiving these things?
Anyone have any insight into what would happen next if I stayed connected to one of these convos?
Anyone have an success making this crap stop appearing on their phone?
I’ve gotten a few of those over the last year or so. I delete them and report them as spam, but I have no doubt that it does little good, as the spammers just use different numbers the next time.
I don’t get the “you have been added” part (maybe that’s carrier-specific?) but I do get group spams. They are usually job offers that sound too good to be true. I’ve never got a reply from anyone back to the group (and you know human nature, someone will inevitably replay all to a group notification email) so I don’t know if anyone else is real or they are just smart enough to shitcan the text.
And there is no way to block the sender. This shit is annoying.
I think you’re getting RCS group chat spam, which seems to bypass the normal spam filters. RCS is a newer chat protocol that Google made, and it has some benefits (like being able to retroactively invite another person to a group chat and letting them see previous messages, along with encryption and read receipts, etc.).
I get them on my Pixel too. Eventually someone else in the group will usually say “scam!!” or insult the sender, or everyone just leaves.
Thanks for all that. I don’t use the Google Messages app. The Samsung messaging app I have is not quite like the one depicted in your how-to cite. Specifically, it lacks the toggle for RCS.
But I think you’re correct that RCS is the underlying protocol in use and evidently it has some spamtastic holes in it.
I think RCS is a account level setting, so even if you disable it through the site or with Google Messages, it should still be disabled in Samsung Messages too. I’m not 100% sure, but it’s worth a shot maybe?
I get them rarely, usually a group chat for some miraculous pyramid scheme.
But I am old enough to remember the wild, wild west of the internet (late 90s, early 00s) when “shock sites” were in vogue… So I actively participate in the chat, just with images from the sordid legends of the web (do not Google if you don’t already know) - everything from “cake farts” to “gay dinosaur porn” to “rotten dot com”.
I usually get banned from the group chat quite quickly, and, I assume, get put on a blacklist because my participation is slightly less than compatible with whatever sales pitch - usually an MLM scam - they are pushing.