(OT) What are these cellphone calls?

Kind of off topic, but I have a prepaid flipphone cell phone. Almost every day I get messages showing a text message that is listed as n/a on my screen. None of them are valid phone numbers. Most are 5 digits. What the heck are these? I assume it's some sort of advertising (spam), but they are always blank, so whats the point?

I can be on a call, or preparing a text message and I hear a beep. Then it shows those n/a things.....

Quite annoying!

Reply to
oldschool
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I don't know. Since it's a prepaid phone, maybe those are text messages reminding you (annoying you?) about how many minutes you have left??

Reply to
mpm

If they were, they would say the number of minutes. I dont know either, thats why I asked,,,,

Reply to
oldschool

Also annoying are calls that either have no phone number, a non-existent number, or unlisted number. First two types are most common.

Reply to
Robert Baer

Well, these calls have no real number. I tried to call one just to see what would happen. A cellphone needs the area code, (even for local calls) so that means all calls are 10 digits. These 5 digit numbers dont work.

I looked at my missed calls or I guess it's missed texts, but no number is the same. I did not have this on my older phone. Same provider, just an older phone, which quit working properly. I told this to a friend and he said he never gets them, but he has a different company. He laughed and said God is calling me. I said that at my old age, that might be true. :)

Reply to
oldschool

4- or 5-digit codes are "shortcodes" which are used by SMS services.

Beware that messages to but also from such numbers often have higher (to very high) rates.

In civilized countries it is possible to stop those messages or to block them altogether, either by replying to them with a message with the word STOP (which would work only for messages from that specific shortcode), or by logging in to some webpage to set the preferences for receiving all such messages.

Reply to
Rob

It's "short code" "sonar spam"; the spammers don't know which cell phone carriers number are in active service so they buy say 100,000 text messages from a "shared short code provider" and blast out a bunch of empty texts to a large block of numbers looking for responses e.g. someone who has their phone set up to auto-reply with an away message to all SMS messages.

If a reply comes back the cell number it came from gets added to a "live one" list which once you accumulate say 10k "live ones" you sell that list on the internet black market for a tidy sum

Reply to
bitrex

What a bunch of crap!!! I thought having a prepaid phone meant it was pretty private. I guess not!!!

Isn't there a DNC (Do not call) list for cellphones, or is that only for landlines?

Reply to
oldschool

What is a SMS service?

Maybe my provider blocks them to avoid the charges, which is why they always say n/a (which I assume means NOT AVAILABLE). Texts are free on my phone. I pay a fee for a set number of minutes. But there is no cost for texts. As long as I have service, I can send/get as many texts as I want. Although it takes forever to type them on a flip phone, they are handy, and dont cost me, so I use them. But these stupid spam things are annoying, even though there is nothing said. But I guess they are not as bad as telemarketer calls....

Reply to
oldschool

Those are services that you can subscribe to by sending some message to that shortcode and then you receive one-time or repeating response messages at a ridiculously high rate. E.g. you send "HOROSCOPE ON" to 12345 and from then on you get a daily horoscope for $1 per message.

Not for those shortcodes! That will be a separate rate that varies per shortcode. Free messages only applies when you send or receive to normal subscriber numbers.

A "regular" problem here is that mobile numbers get recycled some time after the previous subscriber has cancelled them, and when you get a new number they sometimes come with such SMS services still running, and you need to cancel them yourself or block them all.

That is because the SMS services providers are not related to the telephony providers and they don't know that the number was cancelled and re-issued to someone else. (better: they don't care, or don't want to know. probably the messages they sent during the cooling period after cancellation just returned an error message, but they don't use that to unsubscribe their service)

Otoh, it may be what the other reply said: they are probing you to see if you reply and thus are able to receive those messages. That would probably not happen here because mobile numbers are in a separate area code here, so no need to probe that.

Reply to
Rob

They don't know who _you_ are, specifically, but there are only a certain number of phone numbers available for cellular and it's not too hard to figure out which blocks of numbers are commonly assigned to phones from prepaid phone service providers. There's no guarantee any one of them are actually in active service tho and it's a waste of resources to spam text/robocall dead numbers so the spammers try to suss out which ones are live and which aren't

How often do you use SMS? Most providers offer a way that you can block all incoming SMSes except emergency alerts and updates from your provider, or the ability to make a "whitelist" of acceptable senders.

Overseas SMS is often considered a "weird old-fashioned American thing"; because of the way they structure their phone service plan pricing in say western Europe data is pretty cheap but text messaging costs money per text, so most people just disable it and use Internet-enabled text messaging apps like WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger or Viber or whatever the hell the kids use this week to send texts

Reply to
bitrex

Also the amount of bullshit you deal with seems to scale with how janky/inexpensive the prepaid provider is; I have a Boost Mobile prepaid which is Sprint in disguise and they seem pretty good at preventing shenanigans, but some providers are less caring, like those

7-11/drugstore prepaid phones like TracPhone get socked with spam texts constantly
Reply to
bitrex

yes there is.

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And most cell phones let you auto reject numbers.

An app called Call Blocker also lets you block numbers.

Andy

Reply to
Andy

USA was never involved in it.

Reply to
Rob

What are prepaid prices are like there? A price war has been going on for some time here in India. One of the current favourite plans allows unlimited calls and texting for 28 days, plus 1.5GB of 4G data per day. A couple of months ago, most service providers offered this plan for ~US$5-6. Now it's down to about $3.

Reply to
Pimpom

This is a Tracfone. It runs on Verison. Aside from these n/a texts, which I now think are blocked by Tracfone, except for the notice that one came thru, I dont get much spam on this phone. Tracfone itself sends out their own "specials" about every two weeks, which are ads for getting 20% off on your next card, or Free minutes if you buy xxxxxx. And once and awhile thye offer a free game download or free ringtone for holidays. I can opt out of them if I wish, but I have actually used the free minutes a few times and the only send them about 2 or 3 per month, so that's not too bothersome.

Where they do fail, is their customer service. The operators are not in thge US and dont speak good english. I get very confused talking to them, and often have to wait long to get one of them. The last time I needed help, they just said my phone was too old (about 6 years) and sent me a new phone at no cost.

So, I dont have too much to complain about with them.

Reply to
oldschool

OK sure, my point was that nobody under the age of 35 in Europe uses it for text messaging anymore, unlike the US. Regardless of its place of invention

Reply to
bitrex

It is not as much used for person-to-person messaging anymore, but still regularly used for things like automated alerts, 2nd factor authentication, etc.

And then there are those SMS services. I think they are mainly used by the intellectually challenged, which is not really linked to age.

Reply to
Rob

Boost Mobile which I have is no contract, I get unlimited nationwide talk/SMS for $30/month. Plus 4GB of full-speed data _per month_; whether it's 4G or 3G depends on where you are, even where I am in a metro area of 3 million plus people 25 miles outside the city center 4G is pretty spotty and it falls back to 3G about 50% of the time. Data used to stream music doesn't count against the cap so there's that.

I have a Moto e4 phone which is a pretty nice budget Android smartphone, IMO one of the better low-end models compared to LG and Samsung. It's normally around $100-130 but with first month's payment you get it for $50.

Data is very expensive, Boost dings you an extra $5 for every 1GB of data you want above the cap with the plan I have.

TracPhone is like a convenience store/drugstore shelf prepaid phone, it's not a particularly good value, prices start at like $15 for 200 minutes talk/500 text messages and 1 gig of data that expires in a month, plus the cost of the phone. People sometimes call them as "burner" or "drug dealer" phones and they're not half wrong, the low prices and the fact you can buy airtime cards at the supermarket off the shelf appeal to people who'd rather pay cash

Reply to
bitrex

If you decide to go up one tier in the budget phone department I very much recommend the budget Motorola smartphones like the E4 and G4; they're a little heavier than what's considered fashionable with the kids nowadays but the battery life is great and they're extremely rugged, the "Gorilla Glass" screen is nearly impervious to scratches and would take very concerted effort at abuse to crack, and the phone is water resistant and unaffected by say spilling a glass of water on the nightstand on it (inadvertently tested.)

Put 'em in a $7 hardshell case and they're basically indestructible

Reply to
bitrex

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