[no_op]

The US has a 'Do Not Call' registry for unsolicited phone calls, but technically doesn't need one for texts because it's illegal to send marketing texts without prior consent in the first place. Thing is, 'consent' often just means failing to notice a checkbox during a signup flow or something, so people end up getting junk anyway.

Even more annoyingly, politicians wrote in an exception for themselves. In combination with the way campaign finance works in the US, this means that if you've ever give your number to any political campaign, it will be passed around forever and you'll have multiple politicians begging you for money for months leading up to every election. Each individual campaign/organization seems to respect 'STOP,' but once your number is on an e.g. 'Has ever donated to a Democratic candidate' list, there's seemingly no way to get it off for good. Thanks, Obama. (I gave him $50 in 2008.)

[chias]

> technically doesn't need one for texts because it's illegal to send marketing texts

It is unfortunately seemingly not illegal to send me political beg-texts multiple times per day, though.

[JohnFen]

The law specifically exempts such texts from being covered, sadly.

[nilamo]

Proof laws don't work.

[bigstrat2003]

Well... proof that we can't trust politicians to pass laws that are good for us but bad for them, at any rate.

[JohnFen]

No, it's proof that lawmakers are willing to put exemptions into the law when it benefits them. That's bad, but it doesn't mean laws don't work.

If anything, it indicates the opposite. If laws didn't work, then lawmakers wouldn't have to bother to put exemptions in them.

[iamthepieman]

Even worse if someone else signs up somehow using your contact info. I got signed up (via email thankfully) for a political party in another country and no amount of "mark as spam", unsubscribe or replying would get me off the list. Eventually I just had to create a filter that dumps those messages in the trash.

It must be something with non-U.S. English speaking countries because I get numerous semi-spam messages in email and text for services in Australia and the U.K. casinos with account numbers or PINs, two step notifications for national car registries, banking, contractors asking about work or sending invoices. Maybe it's just English speaking countries have a lot of people named "iamthepieman"

[ChuckMcM]

My wife had someone do sign up for a bank account with my wife's gmail address. She told the bank they got it wrong, and they went away for a bit and then they re-signed up AGAIN. So she told the bank to close the account. It didn't re-occur after that.

A number of elderly folks have had this issue as well. I'm really at a loss on how to fix it, some times there are bad actors but generally it seems folks are clueless and the signup flow doesn't adequately account for this.

[Spooky23]

I have a common-ish first initial, last name Gmail account. The number of people who think they have my address is staggering. Hundreds over the years.

In one case, the manager of a large factory was forwarding me an email with remote access credentials and VPN software every month.

[nraynaud]

I had that happen, but I couldn’t fix it because I couldn’t prove I was a customer, since I wasn’t.

[giancarlostoro]

Is the email in question something along the lines of firstnamelastname at gmail? I'm guessing your email address is a really common name that someone else keeps forgetting how their email actually deviates, or someone typos writing theirs.

[bigstrat2003]

Another possible scenario is that Gmail is getting wires crossed. I have had the account [e-mail] for 20 years now. About 5 years ago, some dude in Australia (who coincidentally has the same rare last name as me) started using [e-mail]. Based on the emails I've seen I believe that Gmail let him do this for a while, but eventually started delivering his emails into my inbox. I don't know if there was a technical change in Gmail for how they handled these addresses or what, but it's very odd.

[dfxm12]

[e-mail] and [e-mail] are the same address, according to gmail documentation. If this is what is actually happening (and there isn't a subtle typo, etc.), then something is more wrong than "wires crossed" & you should report it as a security vulnerability.

https://support.google.com/mail/answer/7436150?hl=en#:~:text...

https://www.google.com/appserve/security-bugs/m2/new

[Scoundreller]

Some times I get genuine ones (like a hotel reservation) for someone somewhere that’s also confused about their name.

I’d be happy to help but half the time it’s from a No-Reply email address and that shuts the door on as much effort as I’m willing to supply.

[toast0]

> this means that if you've ever give your number to any political campaign

This is campaign finance reform in action. Giving money is not worth it, because you'll be hassled. Gets the peoples' money out of politics. QED.

[skrtskrt]

I still get 5-10 texts a day from trumpy candidates because someone used my number like 5 years ago when they were spamming signups for trump rallies so the rally would be empty

[Suppafly]

>this means that if you've ever give your number to any political campaign, it will be passed around forever and you'll have multiple politicians begging you for money for months leading up to every election

They really should learn to not do that, my carrier routes most of those to spam already and the few that it doesn't, I mark as spam, so presumably they'll start getting routed to spam for other people with the same carrier.

[meowster]

What's worse is if someone accidentally uses your phone number when they sign up for something, then you're on the list and never able to get off of it.

[chiefalchemist]

If only we had the mobile numbers of numerous politicians. We could make a small donation to their opposing party and add a phone number from that last.