My iPhone 6+ is getting many unwanted text messages

Question

Level 1

14 points

My iPhone 6+ is getting many unwanted text messages

My phone 6+ is getting many unwanted text messages and probably many are lewd ones. No my phone may use AT&T as a provider, but messages are Apple provided. I have reported them to places like gmail and hotmail and now I get some from some unknown site. This has got to stop, My life is being made miserable and it should not happen. Bad enough I get more unwanted phone calls than I want. When I first got an Iphone I did not know I'd be signing up for the world to use me as a telemarketer victim or a a recipient for nudist abusers. THIS HAS TO STOP!! WHAT CAN APPLE DO ABOUT THIS? Can I delete my messages for awhile? I do not want to but I do not know what to do.

[Re-Titled by Moderator]

Posted on Apr 13, 2022 10:39 AM

Reply

Answer 1

Best reply

SravanKrA

Community+ 2024

Level 10

411,788 points

Apr 13, 2022 12:58 PM in response to itasarah

Firstly, Apple does not send any messages. Probably you mean through Apple servers.

If they are SMS then it is through your Carrier.

Go to Settings > Phone. Tap Call Blocking & Identification. Under Allow These Apps To Block Calls And Provide Caller ID, turn the app on or off. You can also reorder the apps based on priority.

Detect and block spam phone calls - Apple Support

Block messages from a specific person or number

In a Messages conversation, tap the name or number at the top of the conversation.
Scroll down, then tap Block this Caller.

Block, filter, and report messages on iPhone - Apple Support

Reply

Answer 2

Apr 13, 2022 1:23 PM in response to itasarah

You should contact AT&T and find out what services that have to help you deal with spam calls and texts. I know my carrier has an app. There are also third party apps such as SpamHound and SMS Spam filter.

Yes, I agree that it's a terrible thing to abuse nudists. They are people, too!

Reply

Answer 3

ChrisJ4203

Level 10

230,473 points

Apr 13, 2022 1:28 PM in response to IdrisSeabright

Yes, AT&T has spam filtering they provide, as well as something through their app. You can also report spam texts, even ones that come from email addresses and get blocking done. Contact your AT&T customer service representative.

Reply

Answer 4

ChrisJ4203

Level 10

230,473 points

Apr 13, 2022 1:41 PM in response to IdrisSeabright

Whoops, I did not mean to respond to you like you were unaware, it was more of an information for the OP to enhance what you had to say. Yes, you can forward to that short text code, you just need the number to report it. And, they have enhanced their system to where you can report spam texts that are coming from email addresses as well. As you probably know, if you report a text with the 7726, it asks for the phone number the text came from, and if it was email, you don't have that, but they have a code they can use now to send the report and they can lookup the party and block it that way.

Reply

Answer 5

itasarah Author

Level 1

14 points

Apr 14, 2022 11:16 AM in response to SravanKrA

Thanks for the message. II do not think you understand that my iphone 6+ does not say block this caller when it comes to sms text messages. I do block real phone calls, but for text message under details it says "do not disturb" and I really do not understand that. It used to say, if I remember, block message, but not now. Somewhere I read that I can press this and I won't see the message again but the sender has no idea about it and does not know I can't read it; so they cansend it anyway. Does my provider set this up? I thought sms messages came with my APPLE iphone no matter who my provider is for the phone would be. You are saying then the messages themselves go thru my provider but the message app then comes from Apple?

Reply

Answer 6

itasarah Author

Level 1

14 points

Apr 15, 2022 9:11 AM in response to IdrisSeabright

I have talked to AT&T about it but not for awhile. I tried just now to get the spamhound filter and although it says on their site it works with IOS 10x and higher, it really doesn't. When I went to the app site and ordered it I get the usual "This application requires ios 13.0 or later" and I REFUSE to buy a new phone. I can no longer up grade the ios on my 6+phone So I am doomed to obsolescence for quite awhile. It is unfortunate that apple and others apps cannot keep the option to download older apps

that used to work and probably would still work on older phones. Apple is no longer the company "for the rest of us."

Reply

Answer 7

itasarah Author

Level 1

14 points

Apr 15, 2022 9:45 AM in response to IdrisSeabright

I used to do that but then 7726 became an annoyance as well. Then I would forget what it was for. Many texts do not have phone nos. only email addresses (which are probably fake) so if the are hotmail or gmail I send them off to those companies. Many have all kinds of phishing numbers and some computer is searching through all those numbers and I get the sms as well. Some people respond stop as if I was the one who sent it. This should never have happened but now there is no way to stop it and the companies and registries I am sure cannot keep up. You would hardly believe how many calls I have blocked. My list was so long a couple years ago it took about three days to erase them since my phone only lets me delete one caller at a time. If there are a few thousand there it takes forever. Since I erased them last, I have hundreds more maybe thousands.

Not sure about what you said, "Yes, I agree that it's a terrible thing to abuse nudists. They are people, too!" The fact is they are abusing me by sending such messages. Last one I got said "Local Girls, housewives, milf available" with links to different sites (I did not open). There is NO REASON I should be getting these. I am 74 and is the last thing I want in messages and it is not just one. I have a lot of these that some computer spews out to me often.

Don't mean to rant but I am truly annoyed!!!!

Not sure what you meant by

Reply

Answer 8

ChrisJ4203

Level 10

230,473 points

Apr 15, 2022 10:05 AM in response to itasarah

itasarah wrote:

There is NO REASON I should be getting these. I am 74 and is the last thing I want in messages and it is not just one. I have a lot of these that some computer spews out to me often.

There is no reason any of us should be getting this but we do. That is how spam works. Believe me, you are not getting singled out. I suggest you call AT&T customer service and you can ask them about blocking all SMS messages that originate from an email address. This is something they offer now.

Tell the customer service rep to look up article *446389 in their system. That explains what they need to do. You can read the information in the link below.

https://forums.att.com/conversations/account-features/block-text-messages-from-email-address-spammers-latest-technique/5df02b91bad5f2f606e8c5d2?commentId=61f5a1de08dc6165edbd9531

Reply

Answer 9

Apr 16, 2022 8:19 AM in response to itasarah

itasarah wrote:

Not sure about what you said, "Yes, I agree that it's a terrible thing to abuse nudists. They are people, too!" The fact is they are abusing me by sending such messages. Last one I got said "Local Girls, housewives, milf available" with links to different sites (I did not open). There is NO REASON I should be getting these. I am 74 and is the last thing I want in messages and it is not just one. I have a lot of these that some computer spews out to me often.

Don't mean to rant but I am truly annoyed!!!!

Not sure what you meant by

You said that you were getting messages about nudist abusers ("a a recipient for nudist abusers"). I agreed with you that it would be upsetting if people were abusing nudists. It's not as if there's anything wrong with being a nudist.

Reply