SMS Spam and an Idea for Apple and Google

Last week, leading up to Joe Biden’s State of the Union Address, I probably received close to 3 dozen text messages from various political groups asking me what I think of Biden, if I was going to watch his speech, and who knows what else. I’m really starting to get sick of these messages and with the 2024 election season kicking off, it’s going to get worse.

So I have an idea for Apple or Google, add processing rules for text messages. I would love to be able to create a rule that says “If the message comes from a number not in my contacts that contains the word ’Biden’, delete the message.” It annoys the living bejeezus out of me that I keep getting all these messages and have no way of blocking en masse. Every message is from a new number and every time I have to go in, block the number and then delete the message, reporting it as junk.

It would be amazing to not be bothered by political cranks or anyone else that might constantly spam my messages inbox. I try to keep text messaging limited to friends and the like. I always make sure to opt out of all SMS messaging opting for email. While this wouldn’t absolve carriers to continue fighting the scammers and spammers, it would at least help us users to filter out what we clearly don’t want to reach our inbox.