She just got five identical texts in quick succesion:
From: New Message
Subject: ( No Subject )
To download, press Get
This ain’t my first ro-day-oh, so I assume that, were I to press Get, what I would Get is an endless stream of texts advertising boner pills and dog and pony porn. Each at 30 seconds of my hard-earned minutes. I would block the number, but I can’t with this POS, and the number doesn’t come up. Thing 2 wants to give her her much more capable Android phone, but needs the money to replace her own. Wife is loathe to give up her number, but that’s what’s getting called.
So, should I just toss the mofo, or should I press Get and see what happens? Please note that my inclination is the latter.
No, I want to stop them. Those five texts, one a minute, ate 2.5 minutes of talk time, and this went on every few hours for unknown days before Thing 1 said, “Daddy, fix this.”
As a fellow owner of a burner phone I concur with the goals but do not know if there is a way to achieve them. You pay by the text. Typically text spammers use a multitude of different origination numbers so it’s difficult to block them all, but I don’t see anything wrong with a goal of not spending money you don’t have to for spam.
Feel free to dispel my ignorance, but I thought a burner phone was a phone you were treating as temporary and disposable. So if there are problems with it, you burn it. (Metaphorically speaking, that is.)
Yeah; if your wife is receiving unwanted texts on her burner phone, shouldn’t she drop it in the nearest trash bin and then stride briskly away, or possibly hurl it out the window of the car you’re currently driving the wrong on the Autobahn in? Then, you pry up the floorboards at the safe house and get a new pair of passports. (“Okay, honey, you’re now Olga Kuznetsova, born 6 September 1993 in Vladivostok…”)
Extreme ways are back again
Extreme places I didn’t know…
Maybe I’m living with blinders on here, but doesn’t the term “burner phone” imply also the ownership of a clean, legitimate “non-burner” phone? The burner phone you use for illicit or clandestine purposes, while the clean phone is what you use for regular personal stuff?
So, to me the question is "Why do you (or your wife) have a burner phone?
Yep. I have a $20/mo Virgin Mobile flip phone at 400 min/mo with no charge (AFAIK) for incoming texts. Sending texts, though, is another $10/mo and unlimited is another $10 over that.
Some people think “pay-as-you-go” cell phone service that uses a cheap phone is the same as a “burner” phone. The situation shares the same service and equipment as an international assassin might use, but the intent is totally different.
The assassin wants to be able to trash the phone at the drop of a hat. Old people want to pinch pennies.
I’d like to bump this topic, because I have the same issue. Somehow my number got leaked out and I am receiving dozens of these spam messages daily.
The responses I see in this thread are mostly sarcasm. I hope this isn’t typical of straight dope, as I am new here. I’d like an honest answer to how to stop these spam messages, if there is one. So far by the responses, it seems unknown.
I have an LG 440G phone. The question is, how do I block these spam messages?
Thanks to whoever has the answer.
TD:)
Thomas Didymas, welcome to the Dope! It appears that you’ve lurked & learned some of our terms before making your first post. This fact alone makes me hope you stick around after you get your problem resolved.
Are the spam messages coming from one number or different ones or even an email address (as spammers are known to do)? If one number, can you block it on your phone? If not, contact your provider’s customer service dept to see what options they have to block.