this is from the tps home page The TPS can accept the registration of mobile telephone numbers, however it is important to note that this will prevent the receipt of marketing voice calls but not SMS (text) messages. If you wish to stop receiving SMS marketing messages, please send an 'opt-out' request to the company involved.
What telephone numbers you can register with Telephone Preference Service (TPS)? TPS accepts registration of live telephone numbers. These include all landline and mobile telephone numbers. TPS requires that the telephone number is registered by the user having made an informed decision.
Thank you for giving me the number. I knew there was a spam text number I could use to report them. Why didn't the O2 Guru know it ?!!
We don't know why they didn't know, but we knew, so if they don't know better come here where we know what they don't know that we know, why they don't know we don't know either!
Regarding Spam calls to landlines. TPS can only help if you can provide the numbers. Most 'cold callers' nowadays do not provide you with a number. These sort of calls will show a caller ID of the the following.... 'Withheld, International, or Private Caller. I find myself answering all of them as they actually MAY be calls from people/organisations that need to get in touch with me. (when this happens and before I disconnect, I really wish I had a handy airhorn to blast down the phone!!)
The advice in the OP is well meant, and all very well, but it misses the point: O2 should prevent this rubbish from reaching its customers.
Entreaties from ambulance chasing lawyers and the like are simply an annoyance. But messages designed to gull phone users into parting with confidential information, or reply to premium rate numbers - just two types of common fraud - are sadly common too and it's distressing how often people still fall for them.
As the provider of the phone service, 02 has both a moral obligation and a commercial self-interest in stopping text spam once and for all. The technology to do so exists and is, in the scheme of things, not hugely expensive. At the moment though O2 is getting away with the lowest-cost option - getting subscribers to do the leg-work of spotting and reporting spam.
I get about five or so such spam messages a month. I'd be interested to know how many others on here receive. What would be the number each month, I wonder, before people up-sticks and move to an operator that does offer protection from spam?
@Anonymous wrote: I get about five or so such spam messages a month. I'd be interested to know how many others on here receive. What would be the number each month, I wonder, before people up-sticks and move to an operator that does offer protection from spam?
Is there an operator that does that?
Do you really want O2 monitoring all your incoming calls and texts, not for me thank you?
Do you really want O2 monitoring all your incoming calls and texts, not for me thank you?
GCHQ already does. Have you tried asking them to opt out?
The system I know of is only for SMS and yes, it has been deployed by an operator, although sadly not one in this country yet. It does not *read* incoming texts - just interrogates the accompanying addressing data to determine the real point of origin. Spammers don't like to pay to send messages - it undermines their business model - so they use faked or spoofed addresses, or send from a network with no termination charge agreeement with the receiving network. Dodgy sending address = spam.
Stillinshorts wrote: What would be the number each month, I wonder, before people up-sticks and move to an operator that does offer protection from spam?
As that isn't possible you will have to live wih it.
Terrible hardship deleting 5/6 spam texts every month but you just have to accept it I'm afraid. Even when you have covered all the above steps, spam will get through. I receive these from companies such as WilliamHill (never used their services in my life) and it would be very difficult for any network to identify such texts as spam.
I am enjoying your sense of irony - you are of course correct: it's hardly life and death for those of us with half a brain to delete/ignore spam as necessary. However, I do worry about the hard of thinking who fall for some of these text scams. I think operators owe them a duty of care and really ought to be doing more than simply pushing the problem back on subscribers.
When i get a spam text, i just hit FORWARD, enter number 7726 and hit SEND
I get a text back, saying "thanks for that, now can to text us the number it came from.."
On my phone this is not so simple; i have to view the contact card for the message, edit it, select the contents of the phone number field, copy, exit edit mode, exit the contact card, go back into inbox, write a new message to 7726, paste the number and send
Could you please have the dev team upgrade your system, so that you just search my immediate text message history for a text that has the exact body text of what I've just forwarded? (I'm thinking a database query like "SELECT number_from FROM messages_history WHERE number_to = [my number] AND message_body = [spam_message body I just forwarded] AND message_date > [3 days ago's date]") It would make my life a lot easier..
I know we send 4500 text messages every second in the uk but o2 must have access to soome pretty meaty OLAP hardware and software..
@MI5 wrote: It would be easier to incorporate into the phone software so any forwarded messages preceded with "forwarded message from **********"
That would be the logical way to do it. I too find the present process a little troblesome but persevere as I feel it's important to report the spammers.
OK let me reiterate, the text message I get is from O2s Call Alert service. So O2 must be involved in some way. If I was getting a call then a text to say I had missed the call then I could just block the number, but I don't get a call in the first place, just the message I have missed a call, which I have not.
Looking at My O2 I can see no mention of opting out of marketing calls.
OK let me reiterate, the text message I get is from O2s Call Alert service. So O2 must be involved in some way. If I was getting a call then a text to say I had missed the call then I could just block the number, but I don't get a call in the first place, just the message I have missed a call, which I have not.
Looking at My O2 I can see no mention of opting out of marketing calls.
Hi @Anonymous
Have a look at this link. It's about O2 call alerts. Tells you all about it and how to turn this facilty off
If you have barred a particular number on your telephone AND you have set your call options on O2 to advise you by text message of any missed call, then you will get one of those O2 text messages every time one of the calls is received (and blocked by your phone). This is what is happening to me daily, but your situation my be different. I am now trying to get the caller blocked by O2. (When I tried just now, O2's system was down, and they asked me to call back later. Seems extraordinary that they could not call me back when ready, but they alleged it was for security reasons, which I don't believe.)
The "saving of 40%" Indian-sounding shouty lady scammer called my mobile from 02034104725 a short while ago, so watch out. You'd think a real O2 rep would know I am only just 7 months into a 2-year non-Refresh contract, wouldn't you?
TPS only works if the person calling you is registered in the UK.
Scammers in India using computers to spoof UK numbers are not cover by this.
It is an Indusry over there, generating Millions of Pounds.
Just google "Scamming the Scammers".
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