On US political campaigns using text message spam to influence voters:
P2P texting has become much more integrated with other communications channels like direct mail and online promotions, increasing its reach and effectiveness. For instance, I recently responded to a Trump Facebook ad, then filled out a short survey at a Trump site. The next day, I got a text from the campaign asking for a donation. Even though I’m neither a Republican nor a Trump supporter, the campaign had my cell number and was able to match my online identity and/or my email address to it.
A campaign typically starts with a list of cellphone numbers taken from a voter file it leases from the party. The voter file contains voter-provided phone numbers, email addresses, and demographic information on everybody with a recent voting history. My cell number wasn’t likely in the GOP voter file, but the Trump campaign gets millions of additional phone numbers by purchasing them from commercial data vendors like Axciom or i360. Whatever their source, the cell numbers can be queued up and placed into text messages in the P2P texting app, along with some boilerplate text that the sender can customize with their own words. Then they just hit Send and move on to the next phone number.
– Inside the 2020 campaign messaging war that’s pelting our phones with texts
Phone text messaging, unlike email, has had little to no innovation in terms of the user experience. Apple’s, Google’s and major phone manufacturers’ ‘SMS’ apps are rudimentary at best. There is zero spam protection. Android at least lets you change your default messaging, and there exist alternatives that support spam filtering and block lists. iOS doesn’t even let you do that. There is no spam filtering, and blocking only works for regular phone numbers – it doesn’t work at all for the most common spam: from SMS shortcodes. You can uninstall email On your phone but you can’t turn off SMS.