Text Message Spam: How to Block It

If spammers have invaded your phone’s text inbox, don’t bother angrily texting them back – just go onto your carrier’s website to take care of the problem.

Author:: Matt Brownell
Publish date:: Feb 10, 2012 4:10 PM EST

NEW YORK (MainStreet) – We all get email spam, and these days it’s pretty easy to deal with: You beef up your spam filter, take your email address off of any mailing lists that give you the option to unsubscribe and add any particularly troublesome emailers to your email client’s blocked list.

Text spam is a different story. It’s not as common as email spam, but it’s a lot harder to ignore when you’re getting it, and it’s not immediately apparent how you go about blocking it. Sometimes it’s a simple matter of replying with the word “STOP.” If that doesn’t work, you’ll need to go to the website of your mobile carrier to change your text options.

If Verizon Wireless is your carrier, go to the “My Verizon” drop-down menu on the Verizon website and click “Manage Verizon Safeguards.” From there you can block unwanted calls and texts from certain phone numbers, though most spam texts actually originate from the Internet. To take care of this type of spam, click “Set Up Internet Spam Blocks” and you can block up to 15 email addresses, domains or text names. If spam is a big problem for you and you don’t get texts from friends via the Web or email, you also have the option to just block all texts that originate from the Internet. If you have kids, Verizon also just introduced a new feature that allows you to block certain numbers from contacting your child and limit the times of day when your kid can text or make calls. It costs $4.99 per month for each line.

The other carries have similar controls. If you’re on AT&T, you’ll need to register to customize your message preferences. From there, just navigate to “Blocking Options” under the “preferences” section to block individual email addresses and Web domains.

Sprint customers should go to Sprint.com, then select “My preferences” under “My Sprint.” From there, select “Limits and Permissions,” then “Block Texts.” Here you can choose which senders you’d like to block.

Matt Brownell is a staff reporter for MainStreet. You can reach him by email at matthew.brownell@thestreet.com, or follow him on Twitter @Brownellorama.